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_ IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


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BY PAUL VAN DYKE 


IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


CATHERINE DE MEDICIS. Two Volumes 
RENASCENCE PORTRAITS 


THE AGE OF THE RENASCENCE 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


THE FOUNDER OF THE JESUITS 


BY 


PAUL VAN DYKE 


PYNE PROFESSOR IN HISTORY AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
NEW YORK - LONDON 
1927 


CopyRiGuT, 1926, By 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Printed in the United States of America 


THE GETTY CENTER 


LIBRARY 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
Me a el I 
II. IcnatitusaASA MANOFTHE WoRID ...... 14 


III. His Own Story: His CONVERSION AND How Gop 
Bae et ee hl a yay ig > 20 


Loyora’s Own Story: A PILGRIM ANDA STUDENT. . 46 


ne 


AT THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES AND IN THE HANDS OF 
RRUMMTIISETIOND 0-5 OL ea OK OB 


VI. SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS AND THE COMRADES HE GAINED 
SS ie crt Mein a Lem Ea 4, iy 


VII. THe Poor Pircrim Priests: WORKING AND WAITING. 95 


VIII. A Powerrut ENEMy. BEGGING AND FINANCE. THE 


PRION ACAIN 2) hs ek. be we ETS 

IX. THe FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS. . . . 130 
Meet CONSTITUTIONS. . . . . «© « « » « »« 346 
Pewee INEEDOF THE TIMES . . . . . 2 s.. « 368 
Pose koe WORK Or THE COMPANY . . . . . . . + %&F9S5 
ert a)PPOSITION TOTHE COMPANY . . . . « « = «> 192 
XIV. IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY . . . 210 
DMETMOREMCE 00 oo ce a a | lew pe eee es 
XVI. THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS . . . . 238 


XVII. THE BEGINNINGS OF MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN: 


‘ie APOSTLE.T0 THE INDIES :) (7) 2a) Ses ee eas 
Vv 


AXIT. 


CONTENTS 


THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 

His VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE . 

THE MystTIc 

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS. 


NOTES 
List oF Books CITED. 


INDEX 


PAGE 


267 
285 
303 
317 
335 
359 
364 
369 


IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


CHAPTER I 
THE TASK 


This chapter discusses three topics: first, the greatness 
of Ignatius Loyola; second, the difficulty of seeing him 
in the light of his own ideals; third, the materials for 
inaking a true picture of him. 

The sixteenth century was an age of that “passion and 
strong desire” which young German writers toward the 
end of the eighteenth century wished to describe in poetry, 
romance and the drama. Their leader, the youthful 
Goethe, chose well when he took as the hero of his first 
play a robber baron of the sixteenth century. For during 
that century ideals, impulses, habits of thought, hopes, 
fears which their ancestors had ignored or suppressed be- 
came dominant in the lives of many people of western 
Europe. The whole medieval conception of the universe 
faded like some grandiose dream as humanity awakened. 
Just as the prows of Columbus broke the bounds of the 
ocean which the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had 
not dared to pass; just as the telescope of Galileo finally 
proved in the teeth of theological authority that Joshua 
could not have made the sun stand still, so in the spiritual 
sphere large numbers of men broke through the scholastic 
- tradition, not so much by a reasoned process, as because 
it restricted new beliefs, feelings and habits. The Renas- 
cence passed the Alps and during the sixteenth century 
flooded western Europe from Gibraltar to the shores of 
the Baltic. 

Its influence appeared in the world of action. Two 
dynasties, each supported by the nascent pride of a great 
nation, fought for half a century over the spoils of weaker 

1 


2 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


peoples and the hegemony of a new political world. Man 
lost interest in the ideals of chivalry and discussed the 
maxims of Machiavelli. One of the bitterest contro- 
versies in human history bred fear and hate. Roman 
Catholic and Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist and Anabaptist 
solemnly put each other to death in fulfillment of what 
they thought to be their duty to God and man. 

Out of strife and labour, out of growth and decay, out 
of effort to find new truths and struggle to defend old 
institutions, a great change in the attitude of humanity 
began to be accomplished. For many people the vision 
of man’s place in the universe as Dante saw it, was changed 
into the vision of man’s life as Shakespeare saw it. 

The century which beheld these great and sometimes 
convulsive changes was a century of great personalities. 
New thoughts and feelings need mouthpieces, the defense 
of ancient institutions or of new ideals calls for captains 
who are braver and stronger and wiser than their 
followers. 

Of all the results of this change and turmoil of that 
troubled century none is so outstanding as the breaking 
up of the Church. In 1500 Europe had left from the days 
when all the lands and peoples south of the Rhine and 
the Danube were united in the Roman Empire, only one 
universal institution; the Holy Roman Church Catholic 
and Apostolic. Into her membership all men were born, 
to her authority all men were subject. She spoke and 
prayed in all lands in the old universal language. In her 
the idea of the unity of Christendom was incorporate. 
The sixteenth century drew a line, so far as religion was 
concerned, across Europe from ‘east to west. South of 
that line, according to the thought and phraseology of 
any previous generation, was orthodoxy and unity; north 
of it was heresy and schism. England, Scotland, the 
northern provinces of the Netherlands, most of the cantons 
of Switzerland, most of the secular states of the German 


THE TASK 3 


Empire, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, established their 
own national churches with their own creeds, their own 
prayers in their own tongue, their own system of govern- 
ment which owed no allegiance to any authority outside 
of their own borders, and tolerated no worship different 
from their own formularies. In France, Bohemia, Poland 
and Transylvania, although the bulk of the population 
remained faithful to the orthodox church, the fear of civil 
war brought about the toleration of one of the types of 
dissenting churches. 

It was in connection with the change in the Universal 
Church that the power of the institution Ignatius Loyola 
founded became most evident. He did not plainly foresee 
from the beginning this mightiest of the labours of the 
Company of Jesus. But, soon after his death, his fol- 
lowers were quite certain that it was the will of God that 
they should be the leaders in saving the Church from 
what one of their modern writers calls ‘a whirlwind of 
passions let loose by hell against the spouse of Christ .. . 
the most fruitful heresy ever launched by the devil upon 
the earth.” * This did become, therefore, the most con- 
spicuous of four tasks undertaken with marked success by 
that Company of Jesus in which the spirit of Ignatius 
Loyola became incarnate. 

In the eyes of those who believe that the changes of the 
sixteenth century opened to men’s feet the paths of prog- 
ress, Ignatius is therefore labelled as a reactionary and a 
conservative. Now a prevailing tendency of the modern 
world—one might almost say the prevalent temperament 
of the modern world—inclines it towards the assumption 
that no conservative can be a great personality, because 
conservatism is always the result of a weak intellect or a 
timorous character. The fundamental difficulty in show- 
ing to many people how highly developed and how rarely 
combined were the qualities of character which made 


1 Astrain L. LIT. 


4 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Ignatius Loyola a power among men, lies therefore just 
in this fact that he was an extreme conservative; in his 
main attitude a reactionary. 

Certain other factors conditioning the way in which his 
character expressed itself—factors purely circumstantial, 
tend to obscure his greatness for many of us. The Amer- 
ican of the twentieth century is a very different person 
from the Spaniard of the sixteenth, and Ignatius was born 
in those Basque provinces whose inhabitants still show 
the remnants of that trait of independent conservatism, 
shedding innovations as a duck sheds water, which became 
the most outstanding trait of the virile Spanish people, 
who in the sixteenth century threatened to dominate - 
Europe and America and made in the realm of art and 
literature such magnificent contributions to the common 
treasure of humanity. The ideal of Ignatius was an in- 
ternational ideal. He thought and planned always in 
terms of Christendom, never in terms of Spain. He wished 
to look at humanity as God looks at it and to take toward 
the organized political world the attitude implied in the 
office of the visible Vicar of the Eternal Christ. 

But, in spite of his extraordinary success in this effort, 
Ignatius remained in all the subconscious motives and 
forces of his personality, a Spaniard. Though he spent 
many laborious years in university study, Spanish and not 
Latin remained his natural medium of expression. He 
was very proud of the fact that his order could unite men 
of hostile nations in affectionate relations, but he found 
his most efficient lieutenants among Spaniards. So that 
while he lived, and for seventeen years after his death, 
Spanish influence was as dominant in the Company of 
Jesus as Italian influence has been for five hundred years 
dominant in the Papacy. 

Then Ignatius was not only a Spaniard but in one re- 
spect a typical Spaniard of the sixteenth century. If any 
man ever made his faith his own, Ignatius did. It was 


THE TASK 5 


strengthened by long converse with God in the silence of 
his soul, deepened by terrible self-denial, broadened by 
deeds of mercy. But, though his faith was his own, the 
extreme contented orthodoxy of Ignatius and his self- 
effacing obedience to the Church had its roots in his racial 
inheritance and the environment of his youth. A modern 
Spanish Jesuit, discussing the Spanish nation at the birth 
of Loyola, writes: “In the midst of such lamentable moral 
relaxation . . . whatever may be the reason . . .. it is 
certain that, in the mind and heart of the Spanish people 
at that time, the faith of Jesus Christ reigned with a power 
which no passion, no sophism, no misery, no interest could 
dispute. How different appears the attitude of the Span- 
ish people and the attitude of the German people in the 
presence of the Protestant heresy. Luther and some apos- 
tate priests preached rebellion against the Church and 
entire kingdoms and provinces gathered round the 
heresiarch. A few people preached in Valladolid the same 
errors and two hundred thousand Spaniards rushed to see 
those preachers burned and from two hundred thousand 
hearts burst a cry of anathema and execration against 
those who had tried to stain the purity of their faith.’’ 

In noble Spanish families, during the youth of Ignatius, 
there was a tendency to regard heresy in any member as a 
stain on the honour of the family; a disgrace to be re- 
sented, like cowardice in a son or unchastity in a daughter 
of the house. That typical Spaniard, Philip II, said 
that if a son of his were condemned for heresy, he would 
carry a fagot himself to place at the stake.* He would 
not have said that, if his son were condemned for murder, 
he would sharpen the axe for the executioner to cut off 
his head. 

A single incident preserves for us like a fly in amber 
‘this passionate horror of heresy. It is the celebrated 

? Astrain—LXXXVI. 8’ Camb. Modern Hist. 409. The Reformation. 


6 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


story (which was told all over Europe) of Juan Diaz. 
Young Diaz, son of a well-to-do Spanish family, studied 
for thirteen years in the University of Paris, specializing 
in theology and Hebrew. Just before the middle of the 
century he became a Protestant and went to Germany. 
His older brother Alfonso, a lawyer occupying an impor- 
tant position in the courts at Rome, went to Germany as 
soon as he heard of his brother’s heresy and pleaded with 
him to return to the faith of his fathers. Juan refused, 
and finally the brother gave him a small present of money 
and said a peaceful goodbye. But the disgrace to the 
family weighed on Alfonso’s mind. Early one morning 
he came quietly back, with a trusted servant, to the small 
town where Juan was seeing a book through the press. 
Watching the door, he sent the servant in with a note. 
As the half dressed Juan was reading it, the servant car- 
ried out his master’s orders by killing him from behind 
with a hatchet he had concealed beneath his clothes. The 
murderous pair got to horse and rode as far as Innsbruck 
before they were arrested. But the Pope claimed them at 
Rome because they were both in minor clerical orders 
and therefore must be tried by clerical courts. Neither 
received any punishment and the historian Sepulveda said 
that every Spaniard at the Court of the Emperor jus- 
tified the deed as the necessary vindication by a Spanish 
gentleman of the honour of his family.* 

The intensity and the quality of an attachment to 
orthodoxy which could produce the words of King Philip 
and the deed of Alfonso Diaz, are strange to our land and 
time—as strange to Roman Catholics as to Protestants. 

Aside from any intensity which belonged to his age and 
his people, the mere fact that Ignatius Loyola was a highly 
orthodox Roman Catholic, will in itself, make it hard for 
some readers to understand him. For many Protestants, 
even with the best will in the world, find it hard to ap- 

“Ranke IV, p. 287-279. 


THE TASK 7 


prehend certain types of Roman Catholic piety. When 
they read the lives of the saints, a sense of being in a 
strange atmosphere prevents them from feeling their 
power and beauty. This element of something uncon- 
nected with familiar motives and habits, must exist for 
them in any true life of Ignatius Loyola and only a strong 
effort of the sympathetic imagination can enable them to 
see the man as he was in the light of his own ideals and 
the power of his own faith. 

Another bar to the understanding of Loyola for many 
readers is the fact that he was a monk.* In 1500 the monk 
was a figure so common and conspicuous as to be ines- 
capable and his picturesque presence constantly recalled 
to men’s minds the ideals on which his life was based. 
Most Americans rarely see a monk and if called on to 
explain the fundamental principles and history of monas- 
ticism, would either confess they could not, or give an 
account distorted by ignorance or prejudice of an institu- 
tion which in past centuries certainly did great service 
to mankind. 

Perhaps the greatest barrier to the understanding of 
Loyola is something that has no direct relation to his life 
at all. In 1773 the Company of Jesus was entirely sup- 
pressed by a papal bull and the remnants of the once 
powerful society found refuge under the heretic govern- 
ments of Russia and Prussia until 1814, when they were 
again restored to legal standing in the Church. The 
embittered discussions which preceded and followed this 
tragedy of the Company, suppressed by the Papacy it 
was founded to serve, have made the Jesuit one of the 
stock figures of historical fiction, dark, sinister and am- 
bitious. The papal bull which apparently ended the his- 
tory of the Order in complete ruin, accused them of cer- 
tain distinct evils—whether justly or unjustly is entirely 
outside of the purpose of this book to discuss. If the 
Jesuits of the eighteenth century were guilty of the wrongs 


* See note on page 368. 


8 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


charged against them by the Pope, they had become so 
by forgetting the spirit of their founder and disobeying 
his distinct precepts. It would be as just to blame George 
Washington for the crédit mobilier or the oil scandal, as 
to blacken or obscure by the widespread bad reputation 
of the Jesuits of the eighteenth century, the figure of 
him whom his earliest followers called ‘‘the Father” of the 
Company of Jesus. 

To these negative difficulties of the task of describing 
and understanding the story of the life of Ignatius Loyola, 
there must be added a profound positive difficulty. In 
one sense it is not a story at all. There are in it few 
incidents. This book cannot be anything but the descrip- 
tion of the development of a soul and of a soul entirely 
absorbed, to a degree rare among men, by religion, and in 
religion concentrated absolutely upon one task, one affec- 
tion, one hope: the formation of the Company of Jesus 
and the development of its service to the Church of God 
and the souls of men. Ignatius became, and the word is 
used in no depreciatory sense, self-hypnotized. This ob- 
ject alone roused his thought, stirred his heart, or fixed 
his attention; outside of this, life and the visible world 
in which we live it, ceased for him to exist. 

For the description of the way in which his experience 
formed his soul and his character influenced his com- 
rades and followers, the materials, though not extensive, 
are sufficient and trustworthy. They consist of four sorts 
of records. 

I. The writings of Ignatius. Ignatius had none of the 
qualities of style which belong to great writers. Never- 
theless his works, because of their influence on men, must 
be classed among the great writings of the world. “The 
Spiritual Exercises,” a training of thought and emotion 
leading to complete devotion to the service of Christ, is 
a tremendous book wrought out of the struggles of 
Loyola’s soul. In writing “The Constitutions,” the char- 


THE TASK 9 


ter of his foundation and the description of its ideals, 
he had the advice of others, but the dominant ideas 
and the spirit of the work are his. Of his letters we have 
over 6500, written by his own hand or under his orders 
by a secretary. But only twenty-seven were written be- 
fore he was elected General of the Company and the 
rest are mainly concerned with the duties of that office. 

II. Direct records of his words, deeds and traits by 
men who knew him. 

a. His so-called “Autobiography,” which would be 
more exactly entitled his “Confessions.” This is a treatise 
about one-sixth as long as this book, into which most of 
it is incorporated, usually in direct translation. 

Father Gonzalez de Camara writes that one day he 
was talking to Ignatius in the garden at Rome about his 
temptations and Ignatius, by telling his own experience 
gave him such comfort that he was moved to tears of 
joy. An hour or two later, speaking of this experience 
with some of the brethren at dinner, it appeared that 
Nadal (one of the most trusted helpers of Ignatius) 
had for several years been urging him to leave a record of 
the way in which God had led his soul. Ignatius thought 
he had too many more useful things to do. Now, how- 
ever, his intimates succeeded in persuading him to dictate, 
as he found leisure, what God had done for him in his 
conversion. Ignatius kept postponing the dictation and 
it suffered long interruptions, but the gentle persistence 
of Gonzalez and Nadal finally got out of him a remark- 
able human document. Most of it is in his rough Spanish 
but lack of a scribe compelled Camara to dictate the last 
fifth of it in Italian. The only English translation the 
writer knows is from a Latin version made soon after Igna- 
tius’ death. It lacks the strength and naive charm of the 
original. On the whole, it is as if a man had found a 
masterpiece of some rustic wood carver centuries old and 


10 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


sandpapered and varnished it to accord with modern 
taste. 

b. A letter written eight years before Ignatius’ death 
by Diego Lainez, one of his first followers ‘to set down 
in a few words faithfully and simply” what he remembers 
of the edifying sayings of Ignatius and the circumstances 
of the beginnings of the Company of Jesus as he took 
part in them or has heard them from others: a document 
about as long as two chapters of this book. 

c. Collections of notes somewhat resembling the Table 
Talk of Luther or the notes on which Boswell based his 
Life of Johnson. 

(1) One is by Father Gonzalez de Camara, and consists . 
of notes of conversations or incidents; sometimes dated, 
sometimes not. There are four hundred and thirteen of 
these notes varying in length. ; 

(2) A similar collection, made by Father Peter Riba- 
deneira, of one hundred and twelve items, entitled “‘Con- 
cerning the Acts of our Father Ignatius.” 

(3) Another collection by the same author, of ninety- 
eight items is called: “Words and Deeds of S. Ignatius.” 
Ribadeneira had for eight years been quite intimate with 
Ignatius, had sometimes slept in his room and helped 
him in saying mass. Many of the sayings or stories are 
dated and, for most of them, he indicates by initials the 
source. 

(4) A little collection of anecdotes and sayings made by 
Father Nadal, who was trusted by Ignatius.” 

d. The Memorial of Father Faber, which after a brief 
account of his own experience, traces the foundation and 
progress of the Company to the year 1546. About two 
hundred pages.° 

III. Legal or ecclesiastical documents concerning cer- 
tain events in his life.’ 


5 All the foregoing of Class II in Scripta I. ° Fabri Monumenta. 
™Many of these are in Scripta I. 


THE TASK 11 


IV. The last class of material, much less important 
than the preceding three classes, consists of early lives. 
Of these two are by men who knew him well. 

a. The life of Ribadeneira, a Spaniard thirty-six years 
younger than Loyola, was undertaken by the order of the 
General and published in Latin sixteen years after the 
death of Loyola. It is a small book—about one-half 
the size of this book—and was intended only for use in 
the Company. Strict orders were issued not to give it 
to outsiders. The purpose of the book is religious and 
not historical. The writer got much of his material from 
the sources already mentioned, and, as he was not en- 
dowed with a very strong critical sense, it must be used 
with caution when he goes beyond these. There were 
various editions of his work which were considerably 
enlarged. The one used here is usually the original 
edition of 1572. 

b. Juan Alfonso de Polanco was a Spaniard about 
twenty-five years younger than Ignatius. For nine years 
under Loyola and fifteen years after Loyola’s death, he 
was general secretary of the Company. Loyola suggested 
to him that he should prepare to write its history. This 
he finally did and it has been published in six volumes. 
The first seventy-three pages contain a life of Loyola 
previous to the foundation of the Company of Jesus. 
For it Polanco used the sources already mentioned, but 
also put in some things he had heard at Rome. It is 
therefore of more independent value than the lives of 
Ribadeneira. His account of the temper and labours of 
the Company during the life of Ignatius is based on letters 
and is trustworthy. 

With the close of the century begins a style of biog- 
raphy of Loyola in which the legendary element grows 
stronger and stronger and the desire to make an edifying 
picture where the most sensitively hyper-orthodox could 


12 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


find no possibility of the slightest shock of offense, be- 
comes more and more evident. 

This type of writing, which runs down well into modern 
times, completely dehumanizes Loyola, who in spite of 
deserving the title of saint, was every inch a man. Fre- 
quently its style shows a kind of sugary sweetness which 
irresistibly reminds us of some of the overdecorated 
church interiors of the eighteenth century. It has been 
an absolute bar to the understanding of Loyola by Prot- 
estants and many Catholics find it unreadable. 

Most Protestant treatment of the life of Loyola has 
been, at its best, without any strong effort to put itself 
in Loyola’s place. At its worst, it shows a plain inclina- 
tion to blacken everything connected with the name of 
Jesuit. Though this controversial temper has grown less 
intense, it still continues and in English the writer knows 
of but one life of Loyola by a Protestant, which makes 
an earnest and successful effort at sympathetic under- 
standing: the recently published popular “Biography” of 
Mr. Henry D. Sedgwick. 

Much light has been thrown, during the last twenty- 
five years, on the life and character of Ignatius Loyola. 
The publication by the Company of Jesus of its Monu- 
menta has made accessible to everybody all existing impor- 
tant primary sources. Professor Pastor of the Catholic 
University of Innsbruck has in his great History of the 
Popes shown marked candour, and broad scholarship. He 
has given us a sure background for the life of Loyola, 
which has the advantage of being above the suspicion of 
any, even unconscious anti-Catholic bias. 

Professor Boehmer of Marburg published in 1914 an 
account of the early life of Loyola based on profound 
study which shows a trained historical judgment, so fairly 
exercised that it is not always easy to tell whether the 
writer is Catholic or Protestant. 

Finally, two Jesuit authors have given us large Lives of 


THE TASK 13 


Loyola based on the best principles of modern historical 
science and using the utmost candour in stating all the 
evidence upon any disputable point, Father Astrain in 
Spanish and Father Tacchi-Venturi in Italian. 

Both Venturi and Boehmer stop with the formation of 
the Company of Jesus. The narrative and the judgments 
of this book are based upon independent study of the 
original sources, but the discovery that a conclusion had 
been reached at variance with any of these three pro- 
found works has caused a restudy of the evidence. No 
judgment which all of these authorities reject has been 
stated as certain. 


CHAPTER II 
IGNATIUS AS A MAN OF THE WORLD 


Ignatius Loyola was born among the Basques, who 
live at the western end and on both slopes of the Pyrenees, 
partly in Spain and partly in France. A resolute folk of 
tough fibre, they have always made hardy soldiers and 
daring seamen, who led in the dangerous hunt of the whale - 
and were the first Europeans to form the habit of crossing 
the Atlantic in small boats to fish on the banks of New- 
foundland. They are a self-respecting people, proud of 
their ancient liberties; and their independent conserv- 
atism has enabled them to keep, to a degree unusual in 
modern Europe, their strange language, their peculiar 
dress and their ancient customs. 

Ignatius’ father was Lord of Onaz and Loyola and 
represented two of the most ancient lines of the nobility 
of the province of Guipuzcoa. The family, which pos- 
sessed large estates, including a considerable income from 
a neighbouring iron works, was rendered illustrious by 
memories of bravery in battle. Seven sons of the house 
had fought for Church and king in the glorious victory 
of Beotibar won from the Moors in 1321.* 

The Basque nobility shared to the full that desperate 
quarrelsomeness which in the first half of the fifteenth 
century filled so many of the provinces of Spain with 
bloodshed.* The twenty-four chief houses of Guiptzcoa 
were divided into two factions, fifteen of them related to 
the house of Ofiaz and nine related to the house of 
Gamboa, and, in the time of Ignatius’ grandfather, their 


* Henao, Appendix, Pol. I, 523. ? Altamira II, 297. 
14 


IGNATIUS AS A MAN OF THE WORLD 15 


destructive quarrels were incessant. Appeals to the King 
by their non-aristocratic neighbours brought a stern royal 
interference. Laws were imposed whose object, like that 
of the contemporary English acts of livery and mainte- 
nance, was to prevent the formation of factions of the 
nobility. The King of Castile destroyed twenty-five of 
their fortified manor houses, but spared the lower story of 
the Manor of Loyola, which was afterwards rebuilt. The 
King also banished, for four years, twenty heads of 
houses, including the grandfather of Ignatius.* 

Ignatius was the last of thirteen children, with seven 
brothers and five sisters. A brother and a sister died in 
infancy and we do not know even their names. Another 
brother, Ochoa, died at home in boyhood, three of his 
sisters married nobles and four of his brothers became 
soldiers. Three fell in battle; two in the wars of Naples 
and the other in the conquest of America. The seventh 
brother died as rector of the church of Azpeitia—an office 
regarded as naturally belonging to the family.* 

There is some doubt about the year when Ignatius was 
born. Polanco, the secretary, makes in his Life of Ignatius 
confused and contradictory statements about the age of 
Ignatius. Still more puzzling is the fact that Ignatius, in 
his Confessions, makes in passing two statements about 
his age, which cannot both be exact.’ The simplest expla- 
nation of the contradiction is that offered by writers in 
two Catholic journals,° that Ignatius, or if you prefer it, 
his scribe, made a mistake. The attempts to avoid this 
obvious explanation would seem to any one unacquainted 
with the vagaries of the ‘complicated explanations of 
textual difficulties common in literary or biblical con- 
troversies, like an exceedingly forced construction of very 
simple and plain language. 


* Henao, Pol. App. I, 530. ‘Pol. Vol. I, 516. Henao, and Genealogy Claire 
Rib. App. II. Scripta I, 37-55. ® Cited Astrain 3 Note 2. 


16 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


There is no absolute demonstration that Ignatius was 
born in 1491, 1492 or 1495 and each of these dates has 
found advocates in modern times. After all the matter 
is not of fundamental importance for the understanding of 
the character and work of Loyola, who remains the same 
whether he was born three or four years earlier or later. 
No evidence compels us to refuse to accept the date fixed 
at his death by the friends who buried him at Rome. This 
is often called the nurse’s date, because the General of 
the Company of Jesus second in succession from Loyola, 
had testimony taken at his birthplace, including that of 
his nurse, who must then have been over ninety years old. 
But there are better reasons than the memory of a very 
old woman for believing that 1491, the accepted date of 
his birth, is exact. 

He was born at Azpeitia, the seat of his family, in their 
manor which (1)* stood something less than a mile 
outside the little city, back from the king’s highway, 
in a park so planted that the house was not visible from 
the road. An ancient evergreen tree towered above the 
tiled roof of one corner.’ The valley, through which 
flows a little river, is extremely picturesque, but there 
is nothing in the life or sayings of Ignatius to indicate 
that he was impressed by the beauties of nature. Although 
in his later life he loved solitude in the open air of a 
garden and found pleasure and consolation in the view 
of the starry heavens, there is no other trace in him of 
that poet’s attitude toward the visible universe which is 
so prominent in St. Francis of Assisi. 

We have no account of the life of Loyola up to the age 
of thirty. Gonzalez de Camara says: “Ignatius called me 
on a day in September in the year of 1553 and began 
to tell me his whole life and the travesuras de mancebo 
(pranks of youth) clearly and distinctly with all their 


* Text numbers in parenthesis refer to numbers in the Appendix under the 
heading “Notes.” * Henao App. Polanco 531. 


IGNATIUS AS A MAN OF THE WORLD 17 


circumstances.”* The manuscript copies of the Con- 


fessions in existence give only a single sentence to his 
youth. It is perfectly plain that the story which Loyola 
told of his own young manhood is gone and it is probable 
that we have here another instance of mistaken affection 
and a wrong application of the maxim that the whole 
truth is not always edifying. Twenty-seven years after 
Ignatius’ death, the General of the Company answered a 
request of the Castilian Jesuits that the Confessions 
should be printed, by saying there were things in it “not fit 
to be circulated in all hands.” This attempt to replace the 
image of the real Loyola by an officially corrected image 
of him, went on for over a century and a half*® when his 
Confessions were finally printed in 1731. Certainly the 
picture which has been made of a pious Christian gentle- — 
man free from all the vices of the young nobles of his 
day, a perfect example for the lads who flocked by 
thousands to the Jesuit schools of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, is contrary not only to his own opinion but also to 
that of the men who knew him best." Ignatius of Onaz 
and Loyola was like the other young men of his day of 
noble birth, given to gaming, fighting and women, proud 
of his orthodoxy, but not particularly interested in living 
like a Christian. His education was limited to the ability 
to read and to write a beautiful hand. Doubtless he 
composed bad poetry for the ladies like other young 
cavaliers, and knew how to dance, to ride and handle arms. 
His only literary culture, as he says himself, came from 
reading those popular romances of chivalry which would 
now slumber in deserved oblivion if the satire of Cervantes 
had not made them immortal. 

The Confessions of Ignatius Loyola were dictated in 
the third person and so it is impossible to tell certainly 


® Scripta I. p. 32. * Cited, Astrain 17. Boehmer 316. 
™ Camara, Scripta, I, 32. Lainez ib, p. 101; Polanco, p. 10; Nadal, Cited 
Astrain from mss, p. 14. 


18 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


whether all that remains of his description of his youth 
is his own words beginning the lost paragraphs, or the 
summary of them made by some one else when they were 
cut out. 

“Up to twenty-six’ years of age he was a man given 
to the vanities of the world and his chief delight was in 
martial exercises with a great and vain desire to gain 
honour.” (2) 

From various trustworthy sources small pieces of in- 
formation can be gathered, which supplement this vague 
picture. 

It was the custom for families of the lesser nobility to 
send their sons to serve as pages in the houses of more 
powerful nobles, where they might gain the manners of 
society and have a larger experience of life than they could 
get in the solitude of the ancestral manor. The head of 
the house of Onaz and Loyola had accepted the hint 
given by his father when the King half destroyed their 
castle. After he inherited the estate and title, he did his 
fighting on the side of the crown, and found strong friends 
and patrons in great noble houses outside the bounds 
of the province of Guipuzcoa. With two of the most 
distinguished of these his youngest son found honourable 
service. 

While still a small boy, Ignatius was sent as a page 
to the household of Juan Velasquez de Cuéllar, Governor 
of the fortress of Arévalo, not far from the manor of the 
Loyolas, Chief Treasurer and trusted counselor of Queen 
Isabella of Castile. After the death of his royal patroness, 
Cuéllar’s wife renewed close relations to court by her 
intimacy with the second wife of Ferdinand, Germaine 
de Foix. With his master and mistress, young Loyola 
must often have gone to court, for it was the duty of pages 


2 According to the accepted date of his birth, this was a mistake and should 
be thirty. 


IGNATIUS AS A MAN OF THE WORLD 19 


to serve their lord kneeling at table and to accompany 
him on all ceremonious occasions at home or abroad. 
Cuéllar and his wife had excellent reputations for jus- 
tice, generosity and piety, and probably it would have 
been hard to find a better family for training the boy 
in the “exercises of a gentleman.” More than thirty years 
later Ignatius had grateful memories of his first patron.” 

But his visits to court could hardly have been con- 
ducive to the formation of a serious religious character; 
more especially after the pleasure loving Germaine had 
succeeded the pious Isabella as the centre of society. The 
feudal nobility once had two great pleasures, and only 
two, to relieve the monotony of their lives; hunting and 
fighting. In France, Spain and England, the heavy hand 
of the King was limiting the latter of these sports and 
they could no longer always relieve a sense of tedium by 
an attempt to surprise a neighbour’s castle or vent their 
spleen by killing his vassals, driving off their cows or burn- 
ing their ricks. They were changing from a feudal no- 
bility to a court nobility. But they still felt that a gentle- 
man must right his own wrongs and be quick to wipe out 
an insult with blood. The sword at their side, the dagger 
in their belt, were to them the symbol that they were a 
fighting caste and the romances of chivalry pouring from 
the Spanish presses showed in all their pages a passion 
for danger like a thirst for strong drink and a prepos- 
terous readiness to fight, as instinctive as that of young 
game cocks. 

The atmosphere a page breathed when Ignatius must 
have been riding frequently up to court with his patrons, 
is shown by the following story of the experience of his 
future biographer, Ribadeneira. 

Pope Paul III made his grandson, Alessandro Far- 
nese, a cardinal at the age of fifteen and immediately en- 

* Letts. I, 705. 


20 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


riched him with a number of civil governorships and a long 
list of bishoprics and abbacies.’* He spent his large in- 
come freely in generous patronage of letters and art and 
in maintaining an elaborate household. At the age of 
nineteen this splendid young prince of the Church came 
to Toledo and a palace was assigned to him opposite the 
house of the widowed mother of young Ribadeneira. The 
boy got admission to the palace as an extra page to help 
serve the Cardinal at table. He attracted the attention 
of his patron, who offered to take him to Rome as one 
of his household. The mother consented and the twelve- 
year old boy went. One day when Cardinal Farnese was ~ 
being entertained by his grandfather, Paul III, the pages 
of the Cardinal’s suite were waiting in an anteroom where 
there were also cardinals and other ecclesiastical per- 
sonages. The lad took offense at some remark of one of 
his fellows, immediately boxed the other boy’s ears and 
hit him over the back of the neck with the torch he car- 
ried to escort his master home. Nobody reproved him 
for this act. On the contrary the governor of the pages 
said that if he had not hit his insulter they would have 
had him punished.”* 

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that two inci- 
dents of Loyola’s early ‘ilfe of which we know, indicate 
that this young Basque noble shared the violent tempera- 
ment of his fellows and was quick on the dagger; as most 
of them were. 

When he was twenty-four years old he was in Azpeitia 
visiting his family and soon afterwards took the tonsure— 
that is, he had a spot on the back of his head shaved. 
This did not mean that he intended to become a priest 
like his brother Pedro Lopez. It was only the sign that 
he had entered into what were called minor orders, which 
might enable him to draw the income of some ecclesias- 

** Pastor. V, p. 100, note. * Ribad. Confessions. M. H. S. J. I, 7. 


IGNATIUS AS A MAN OF THE WORLD 21 


tical benefice without doing its duty, or possibly help him 
in case he got into any difficulty with the law. This he 
promptly proceeded todo. There was a family feud going 
on in the town, and Ignatius flung himself into it with 
the joyousness with which his comrades were accus- 
tomed to welcome trouble. 

His brother Pedro Lopez, rector of the principal church, 
was not a very exemplary priest. In spite of his ordi- 
nation vows, he had four illegitimate children.** This was 
not rare among the younger sons of Spanish nobles who 
took the family benefices as a matter of course, just as 
their brothers enlisted in the royal army as a means of 
livelihood befitting a man of noble blood. 

It was just this “matter of course’ feeling that the 
ecclesiastical patronage of Azpeitia belonged entirely to 
the house of Loyola, which made the trouble. The cantor, 
or choirmaster in the king’s chapel, was regarded by all 
the Loyolas and their clients as an intruder hunting on 
their ecclesiastical preserves. So it was determined to 
teach him and his crowd a good lesson. Just what was 
done we do not know, but Ignatius and Pedro Lopez of 
Ofiaz and Loyola found themselves facing a warrant of 
arrest issued by the royal judge of the jurisdiction in 
which they lived. The documents in the case show that 
they put themselves under the jurisdiction of the neigh- 
bouring bishop of Pamplona on the ground that they were 
clergymen. This could not be denied in the case of Pedro 
Lopez, and the royal official demanded simply that he 
should be arrested and given by the tribunal of the Church 
‘a punishment worthy of his crime. In the case of Ignatius, 
the corregidor asserted that in spite of his tonsure he had 
no legal right to the benefit of clergy, but was still a lay- 
man, because he had not kept the rules laid down in the 
bull of “the very holy Pope Alexander VI of glorious 
Venturi, II, 9 quoted Cros. 


22 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


memory” for the conduct of clergymen without benefice.” 
The chief reasons given for regarding Ignatius as still a 
layman subject to the jurisdiction of civil courts, were 
that he had not been registered on the list of the vicar 
general at Pamplona, that he had “mingled in secular 
affairs not at all consistent with membership in the cler- 
ical order” and that he had appeared in public in a way 
“not decent” for a clergyman.** He had been in the habit 
of wearing “long hair covering his ears. His mantle was 
too short and was either blue or green or yellow (colours 
forbidden to clergymen). He also wore a coloured cap 
and hose in public and usually went about with a leather 
or iron cuirass, with sword and dagger and carrying a - 
crossbow or some other weapon.” Exactly what the “‘cer- 
tain excess” committed by the young soldier and his 
brother the priest Shrove Tuesday 1515 was, we do not 
know. The judge wrote that it was ‘‘very enormous be- 
cause it was committed at night with malice prepense 
and aforethought.” It may be fairly assumed that it 
did not include bloodshed or great destruction of prop- 
erty; otherwise those details would have been mentioned. 
So far as we know the young rioter finally escaped with- 
out punishment.” 

The second incident in the early life of Ignatius about 
which we have certain testimony, is very similar. 

Four years after the death of Ignatius, Father Her- 
nandez, rector of the college of the Company at Sala- 
manca, took his final vow to Father Araoz, the head of 
the province of Spain. The bishop of Salamanca was pres- 
ent by invitation. In the middle of the ceremony he com- 
menced to weep and the tears ran down his cheeks to 
the astonishment of all. Afterwards Father Araoz asked 
the bishop, at the dinner to which he had been invited, 
‘Why did your excellency weep so much in the church 

™ Church office. 8 Scripta I, 591-2. ” Scripta I. 


IGNATIUS AS A MAN OF THE WORLD 23 


while the profession was going on?” ‘Don’t ask me,” he 
replied, ‘““why I wept when I saw a man entering a religious 
order founded by a man like Ignatius whom I saw with 
my own eyes at Pamplona, when he met a line of men 
in the street and they bumped him and forced him to the 
wall, draw his sword and charge them so fiercely that if 
there had not been somebody to hold him back either he 
would have killed some of them or they would have killed 
him.’’”° 

Not long after Ignatius’ encounter with the law, his 
patron the governor of Arévalo, got himself into very 
much more serious trouble by the same independent con- 
tempt of authority, more or less characteristic of the 
nobles of Spain. Charles I of the foreign house of Haps- 
burg became King of Spain by inheritance through his 
mother. Wishing to provide for the dowager queen Ger- 
maine, and knowing that Juan de Cuéllar was notoriously 
unfriendly to the Hapsburg succession, the Regent trans- 
ferred his chief fiefs to Germaine. This piece of in- 
justice Cuéllar rashly undertook to resist. A royal force 
was sent against him and after a defense of the castle 
of Arévalo which cost the life of his eldest son, Cuéllar 
was obliged to surrender and go to Madrid to make his 
peace with the Regent. Broken in spirit, the old man 
soon after died, heavily in debt, and his wife was obliged 
to become a court lady of the crazy queen Juana.” 

It seems evident that Ignatius stood by his old patron 
in the days of trouble and probably fought with him 
to defend the castle of Arévalo against the royal troops, 
for the widow, closing up the estate and leaving the scenes 
of her ancient grandeur, gave Ignatius as a parting gift 
two horses from the stable and a purse of five hundred 
ducats. 

Whether Ignatius had become a mesnadero, some- 

Scripta I, 566. ™Boletin 17, p. 502-504, 498, ib. 19, 6. 1-18. 


24 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


thing like a member of the gens d’armes in France, re- 
ceiving a small income from the king on condition of 
constant readiness for active service, is not certain. At 
all events the moment was not propitious for royal serv- 
vice and he turned to another old friend of his father’s, 
the Duke of Najera; one of the richest and most pow- 
erful grandees of Spain, able to put into the field an army 
of some four thousand men from the vassals of his own 
estates. Ignatius with his two horses, his arms and his 
gay clothing, betook himself to Pamplona, fifty miles away 
and became an officer in the bodyguard of the Duke. This 
was in effect the royal service, for the Duke was the 
Viceroy of the province of Navarre; conquered five years ~ 
before from its French King and constantly threatened 
with attack from the French side of the Pyrenees and 
revolt from within. It was three years, however, before 
he saw any military service under his new patron. Then 
the city of Najera revolted against its Duke and Loyola 
marched with the army to reduce it to obedience.” When 
the city was stormed, he was one of the first to enter and 
on this occasion showed a generosity which makes plain 
that he was more avid of honour than greedy for money. 
The city, as a punishment for its rebellion, had been 
given over to the soldiers for plunder. But Ignatius re- 
fused to take this chance to enrich himself on the ground 
that it was unworthy of a hidalgo who was serving for 
honour and not for wages. This idea probably came to 
him from the romances of chivalry which were his only 
reading; but it was an idea which most of the readers 
of such books were not apt to apply to actual war. About 
a year later, when he was a wounded prisoner in the 
hands of French captors who finally released him with- 
out ransom, Ignatius refused to be outdone in chivalry by 
a kindly enemy and gave away to those who courteously 
* Polk i13. 


IGNATIUS AS A MAN OF THE WORLD 25 


came to call on him, all his personal possessions: to one 
a dagger, to another his shield, to another his corselet, as 
pledges of gratitude and friendship. 

He had already gained the reputation of not bearing 
malice against those with whom he had quarrels or duels 
on points-of honour.* This generous and conciliatory 
temper, together with that native ability for handling 
men which he afterwards developed in so extraordinary a 
degree, had already been remarked by his patron, the 
Duke of Najera. So when the old factious quarrel of 
the nobility of Guiptzcoa, in which his ancestors had 
played a leading part, threatened to break out again, 
Loyola was sent on a diplomatic mission of reconciliation 
and obtained the triumph of bringing them to an accord 
which gave satisfaction to both parties. 

Ignatius, who had made his way with courage, fidelity 
and wisdom among civil brawls and petty faction fights, 
was now to have the first and last experience of “la grande 
guerre.” 

The Kings of France and Spain had long hated each 
other and each watched for a good chance to take the 
other at a disadvantage; ‘‘which,” as the chronicler dryly 
remarks, “is generally the justice that precipitates princes 
into war.” Francis I made a league with the Pope which 
enabled him to attack Charles in Naples and the insur- 
rection of Castile gave an excellent occasion to attack 
Navarre in the name of its young dispossessed King. An 
army made up of French and French Basques suddenly 
attacked St. Jean Pied de Port, the outpost of the Spanish 
conquest covering the pass into Navarre. After a brief 
bombardment it surrendered rather than stand an assault 
and the forces holding the mountains retreated from their 
strong positions. The fort built to defend the road on 
the southern slope of the Pyrenees surrendered at the 
second cannon shot and the army was across the moun- 


Polanco 13. 


26 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


tains and on the way to the important city of Pamplona. 
The Viceroy, the Duke of Najera, unable to make head 
against the superior force of the invader, hurried to ask 
more troops of the Regent, leaving in Pamplona a gar- 
rison with orders to stand out until help came. No sooner 
was he gone, than the people who hated their Spanish 
conquerors, rose, and sent representatives to carry the 
keys of the city to the invaders. The advance guard 
of the French entered the gates and the garrison of 
the city withdrew leaving, however, a garrison in the 
citadel; which mounted seventeen great guns and many 
small pieces of artillery. Ignatius went into the citadel, 
apparently as a volunteer. At the council of war the 
senior officers were against fighting. But Ignatius in- 
sisted that it was better to be killed than to continue the 
surrenders and retreats which had already brought the 
invaders into the heart of the country at the cost of a 
few cannon shots. When the siege was formed, the Com- 
mandant took Ignatius and two other officers to a confer- 
ence with the French General. The terms offered gave 
so little of the honours of war to the garrison that the 
indignant Ignatius again persuaded his comrades to stand 
to it on the point of military honour and the bombard- 
ment began as soon as the French could plant their bat- 
teries.* Here also begins the invaluable information of 
the Confessions of Loyola. 

Realizing that the fight would be desperate and be- 
cause there was no priest at hand to help him make his 
peace with God, “he confessed his sins to one of his com- 
rades in arms.” This, though not forbidden in cases of 
need, might be found unedifying by some readers, and it 
was, like some other details, suppressed in the early lives 
of Ignatius, even though they were based on the Con- 
fessions. The garrison stood the bombardment a good 
while until the wall was breached and the storming 


* Polanco 12; Bordenave 6-8; Boissonade 548. 


IGNATIUS AS A MAN OF THE WORLD 27 


column was being formed. At this critical moment a 
cannon ball smashed Loyola’s right leg, and made a flesh 
wound in the left. The Commandant showed the white 
flag and after conference agreed to surrender on better 
terms than those first offered: for the garrison were to 
march out with arms and baggage, leaving behind all 
munitions of war. The French entering the fortress, 
found the wounded Loyola, treated him with kindness and 
courtesy and after twelve or fifteen days sent him (fifty 
miles) in a litter to the family castle at Azpeitia. 

He arrived at home in very bad condition. His brother 
called all the doctors of the neighbourhood to a conference 
and they decided that his smashed leg must be reset; be- 
cause, either the journey or lack of skill in the doctors at 
Pamplona, had left the bones in a condition which made 
knitting impossible ‘and so they began once more that 
butchery” (carneceria). More than thirty years later 
enough of his soldierly pride had survived in the subcon- 
scious self of the monk Ignatius to make him recall with 
pleasure how “in all those operations which he suffered 
before and after this, he never spoke a word, nor showed 
any sign of pain except clenching his fists hard.” He 
sank after the operation and on the day before the fes- 
tival of St. Peter, Loyola was told that if he were not 
better by midnight he would die. But “the sick man had 
always been devoted to St. Peter and so it pleased God 
that by midnight he was better” and in a few days out 
of danger. 

But not out of pain. The new doctors had set his 
leg badly. As it began to knit, it was evident that it 
threatened to be shorter than the other and a piece of 
bone stuck out below the knee. As he was determined 
to follow a career in the world, he judged that this would 
be too disfiguring and asked the surgeons if they could 
not cure it. They said yes, but that the pain would be 
terrific. His older brother protested that he could never 


28 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


himself bear such terrible pain, but the wounded man 
bore it with his usual patience. An instrument was then 
applied day and night to keep his leg from shortening, 
which “‘martyrized” him. His general health improved, but 
he was obliged to stay in bed because he could not bear 
his weight on his leg.” 


® Confessions Scripta. 1, 39, 


CHAPTER III 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY: HIS CONVERSION AND HOW GOD 
TAUGHT HIM 


To relieve the tedium of lying in bed, the convalescing 
soldier asked for a romance of chivalry such as he had 
been used to reading. But none could be found in the 
house. So they brought him two books, a Life of Christ 
and the Lives of the Saints. They were big folios; the 
first in four volumes. But, in spite of their heavy appear- 
ance, the wounded man found them very interesting. The 
author of the Lives of the Saints is not known. But the 
Life of Christ was the work of a Carthusian Prior of 
Coblenz, known as Ludolf the Saxon. It had been written 
some hundred and fifty years and had gained great popu- 
larity. Manuscripts of it are very numerous and during 
the fifty years before Ignatius was wounded there had 
been twenty-six editions of it printed in Latin, besides 
translations into French, Portuguese, Dutch, German 
and Spanish.* 

“When he laid aside these books, he did not always 
think of what he had read, but, sometimes, of the worldly 
things about which he used to think before. And out of 
many vain things which offered themselves to his mind, 
one took such possession of his heart that he was buried 
in thought about it two or three and even four hours 
- without noticing it; imagining what he had to do in the 
service of a lady: the means he must use to go where 
she was, his motto, the words he would say to her, the 
deeds of arms he would do in her service. And he be- 


2 Boehmer 304. 
29 


30 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


came so filled with pride in this that he did not con- 
sider how impossible it was for him to put it into action 
because the lady was no ordinary noble woman, neither 
was she countess or duchess, but of a much higher station 
than either of these.’’” 

This sort of hopeless but not unhappy day dreaming 
passion for an unattainable woman was quite in the style 
of the time and its prototype could be found in the poems 
of Dante and Petrarch. Ignatius had never read these 
poets, but the things they sang were in the air as a sort 
of aftermath of chivalry. Who the woman of Ignatius’ 
dreams was, no one knows. It is a good guess that it 
may have been the Queen of Spain, Ferdinand’s second 
wife. 

“However, Our Lady helped him, bringing it about that 
to these thoughts there succeeded others which were born 
of what he read. Because reading the Life of our Lord 
and of the Saints, he thought, talking with himself, ‘How 
would it be if I did what St. Thomas did, or what St. 
Dominic did? . . .’ These thoughts lasted a good while 
and when other things came in between, there succeeded 
the worldiy thoughts spoken of above and they lasted also 
a long time and this succession of different thoughts con- 
tinued many days, he being always fixed on the thought 
which occupied him; whether it was of those worldly ex- 
_ ploits which he desired to do, or of those others of God 
which offered themselves to his imagination, until, tired 
out, he left them and attended to other things. There 
was, however, this difference. When he was dwelling on 
the worldly day dream he found much pleasure, but, 
when tired out, he ceased to think of that, he found him- 
self arid and discontented; and when he imagined going 
barefooted to Jerusalem and eating only herbs and doing 
all the other penances which he saw the saints had done, 


* Confessions, 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 31 


he was contented and joyful not only in such thoughts 
but after, wearied, he had ceased to dwell upon them. At 
first, however, he did not really weigh that difference, 
until one time his eyes were a little opened and he com- 
menced to wonder at that difference and to reflect on it, 
catching hold by experience of the fact that after one sort 
of thoughts he remained sad and after the others joyful, 
and so, little by little, coming to know the diversity of 
spirits which moved him; the one of God, the other of the 
devil. This was his first reasoning about the things of 
God.’’* 

This conception, wrought out of his experience, that 
the world was divided between God and the devil, who 
stirred impulses in the soul for good or evil which he 
might resist or foster, was the beginning of his conver- 
sion and it always remained in his mind the starting point 
of personal religion, either for himself or for others. The 
proof of this is plain in the opening of his great book, the 
Spiritual Exercises. 

He continues in the Confessions to describe the awaken- 
ing of his soul. .. . “And having gained no little light 
from that reading, he commenced to think more truly 
about his past life and the great necessity he was under to 
do penance forit. And here there arose again in his mind 
a desire to imitate the saints and to promise to do by the 
grace of God what they had done. But all that he defi- 
nitely desired to do, as soon as he was well, was to go to 
Jerusalem with such self-discipline and abstinence as a 
generous soul inflamed with God is wont to desire to carry 
out. So he was gradually forgetting those past thoughts 
because of these holy desires which were taking pos- 
session of him; which were strengthened by a visitation of 
this sort: lying awake one night, he saw clearly the 
image of Our Lady with the Holy Child Jesus; in which 

® Confessions 40-41. 


32 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


sight he had for a considerable time very great comfort 
and it left him with such loathing for all his past life, 
especially for his carnal indulgences, that he seemed to 
be entirely freed from all evil pictures which had before 
been in his soul. And so, from that hour (1521) until 
August 1555, when this is written, he never again felt 
the least assenting to any lustful impulse. And by that 
result it may be concluded that the thing was of God: 
although he did not dare to so decide and does not now 
desire to do more than affirm the above facts. But his 
brother also, and the whole household, recognized in his 
conduct the change which had taken place in his heart. 
He persevered in his reading and in his good intentions, — 
and whenever he talked with those of the household, he 
spent the whole time on things of God by which he might 
do good to their souls. And taking much pleasure in 
those books, the thought came to him of setting down 
briefly the things most essential in the life of Christ and 
the saints. So he set himself to write a book with great 
diligence (for he was now able to move about the house), 
putting the words of Christ in red ink, those of Our Lady 
in blue, and the paper was glazed and ruled, and the 
letters were well formed because he was a very good 
writer. (3) Part of his time he spent in writing and 
part in prayer. And the greatest consolation he had was 
in looking at the heavens and the stars, which he did very 
often for a long time, because when he did that he felt 
in himself a very great power to serve Our Lord.”’* 

He then tells us how he was undecided about what 
he should do when he got back from his pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem, whether it would be better to enter the Car- 
thusian monastery at Seville, “never eating anything but 
herbs” or wander about the world as a free penitent. He 
ordered a servant of the house who went to Burgos to 


* Confessions. 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 33 


get information about the rule of life of the Carthusians 
and found it good. 

The impression is given in many brief accounts of the 
life of Loyola that his wound left him unfit to go back 
to the life of a soldier or aid to some great royal officer. 
This is a mistake. His lameness was very slight. He had 
no difficulty in riding and he walked from Gaeta to Rome 
and then to Venice, a tramp which took him across Italy 
and nearly its whole length. It was natural, therefore, 
when he was strong enough to start and did not wish to 
confide his plans to his brother, the head of the house, 
that he should say to him, “ ‘Sefior, the Duke of Najera, 
as you know, is well aware that I am recovered. It would 
be well for me to go to Navarette.’ (The Duke was then 
at that city). His brother and some of the household sus- 
pected that he wanted to make a great change in his life. 
And so his brother took him first into one room and then 
into another and began to beg him with great feeling not 
to throw himself away but to look at the great hopes he 
had from people of importance and how much he could 
amount to in his life, and similar words; all with the inten- 
tion of turning him from his good desire. But the answer 
was of such a sort that without departing from the truth, 
because he had great scruples about that, he avoided by 
artifice the difficulty of his brother. 

“He set out riding on a mule, accompanied by another 
brother, whom he left on the way at the house of a sister 
at Onate while he went on to Navarette. . . . And re- 
membering that the Duke owed him a few ducats, he pre- 
sented a claim for them to the treasurer and when the 
treasurer replied that he had no money and the Duke 
heard of it, he said he might fail to pay everybody else but 
not Loyola; to whom the Duke wanted to give, because 
of past services, a good lieutenancy if he was willing to 
accept it. And he got the money, sent part to certain 


34 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


persons to whom he was under obligation and spent part 
of it on a picture of Our Lady in a shrine which was in 
bad condition, to restore it and to adorn it very well. And 
so dismissing the two servants who had travelled with 
him, he started alone on his mule from Navarette to go 
to Montserrat.” 

Montserrat was a shrine which had great attraction 
for pious pilgrims. It was a Benedictine monastery, 
dating back to the beginning of the eighth century, and 
its church sheltered an image of the Virgin which was 
said to have been carved by St. Luke and brought to 
Spain by St. Peter. 

“On that journey something happened to him which 
it will be well to write down because it shows how God 
dealt with that soul, which, although blind, had such 
strong desire to serve Him in all that it understood. .. . 
It seemed to him then that holiness was entirely meas- 
ured by exterior asperity of life and that he who did the 
most severe penances would be held in the divine regard 
for the most holy, which idea made him determine to lead 
a very harsh life.” In such thoughts he found all his 
consolation, not considering anything interior, nor know- 
ing what humility nor charity, nor patience, nor discre- 
tion, in ruling and measuring those virtues, were; but all 
his purpose was to do those great outward works, because 
the saints had done them for the glory of God.’’® 

“Then, going on his way, he overtook a Moorish cava- 
lier on a mule, and the two, falling into conversation, be- 
gan to talk of Our Lady and the Moor said that he 
believed that the Virgin had conceived superhumanly, but 
he could not believe that she had remained a virgin after 
the birth of Christ: which opinion the pilgrim could not 
shake in spite of many reasons he gave. Then the Moor 


° This is Lainez? summary of what Ignatius had said before he dictated the 
Confessions. Scripta I, p. 101. * Confessions, 45. 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 35 


rode on and was lost to view, leaving him in doubt in 
regard to what had passed between them, for he began 
to be discontented with himself because it seemed that 
he had not done his duty and this aroused indignation 
against the Moor because it seemed to him that he had 
done evil in consenting that a Moor should say such 
things about Our Lady and that he was obliged to defend 
her honour. And so the desire came to him to go seek 
the Moor and give him the dagger for what he had said 
and he had a long struggle over this desire which left 
him in doubt what he ought to do. The Moor before 
riding on, had said that he was bound to a place which 
was a little ahead on the same road very close to the 
king’s highroad, but that the highroad did not pass the 
place. And so, after having thought what would be right 
to do without being able to come to a decision, he de- 
cided to let his mule go with loose reins to the point 
where the roads divided and if the mule took the road 
to the town, he would seek out the Moor and give him the 
dagger and if the mule did not go to the city, but fol- 
lowed the king’s highroad, he would let him be. And 
doing this it pleased God that although the town stood 
little more than thirty or forty yards from the highroad 
and the way to it was very broad and good, the mule took 
the king’s highroad and not the way to the town. (4) 

“And arriving at a big town before he got to Mont- 
serrat, he wanted to buy there the clothing which he had 
determined to wear to Jerusalem, and so he bought cloth 
of the sort they used in making sacks, of a kind which is 
very prickly and ordered a garment made of it reaching 
to his feet. And he bought a staff and a gourd for water 
and tied them to the bow of the mule’s saddle. And he 
bought also some straw sandals, of which he only used 
one and that not for appearance but because one leg was 
still bandaged and in somewhat bad condition, so much 


36 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


so that although he rode, he found it swollen every night. 
So he thought it necessary to wear a shoe on that foot. 
And he took up his journey for Montserrat thinking, as 
was his wont, about the deeds he had to do for the love 
of God. And as his mind was filled with ideas from 
Amadis of Gaul and other books of chivalry, things came 
into his head like them. And so he made up his mind 
to watch over his arms all one night without sitting or 
lying down, but now standing and now kneeling before 
the altar of Our Lady of Montserrat, where he decided 
to leave his garments and clothe himself with the arms 
of Christ. . . . Arrived at Montserrat, after praying and 
arranging with the confessor, he made a general con- 
fession in writing. And the confession lasted three days 
and he agreed with the confessor that he should order 
the mule to be taken away and that he should hang up . 
his sword and dagger in the church by the altar of Our 
Lady. And that was the first man to whom he made 
known his determination; because up to then he had 
disclosed it to none of his confessors. 

“The 24th of March, 1522, the eve of Our Lady, as 
secretly as possible he gave to a poor man all his clothes 
and put on the clothes he longed for and went to kneel 
before the altar of Our Lady, and now there and now 
on foot, staff in hand, passed the whole night, and left 
for Barcelona at daybreak. In order not to be recog- 
nized he went, not by the direct road where he would find 
many people who would know him and show him honour, 
but by a roundabout way to a town called Manresa; where 
he determined to stay in a hospital some days and note 
down some things in his book which he took with him 
very carefully and in which he found much consolation. 
And when he was about a league from Montserrat, a man 
who came rapidly behind him caught up and asked him 
if he had given clothes to a poor man as the poor man 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 37 


said. And when he answered yes, tears filled his eyes 
out of compassion for the poor man to whom he had given 
the clothes because he was told that they had arrested 
him on suspicion of being a thief. But although his desire 
to escape all public notice was very strong, he could not 
be very long in Manresa before people began to talk much 
about him, getting the gossip from Montserrat, and soon 
rumors about his worldly position made it greater than it 
really was—saying that he had abandoned the income of 
great estates, etc. 

“‘And he sought alms in Manresa every day. He ate 
no meat and drank no wine, although they were given to 
him. On Sundays he did not fast and if a little wine was 
given he drank it. And because he had been very partic- 
ular in the care of his hair, as was the custom in those days, 
he determined to let it grow naturally without combing 
or cutting. And for the same reason he allowed his finger 
nails to grow, because he had been very nice in taking 
care of them. While he was in that hospital it often hap- 
pened to him to see, in the clear light of day, something 
in the air not far from him which gave him much con- 
solation because it was very beautiful. He could not 
clearly make out exactly what it was, but it seemed to 
him, in a general way, to have the form of a serpent 
with many things that shone like eyes although they were 
not eyes. He found much delight and consolation in the 
sight of that thing and the more often he saw it, the 
greater consolation he found in it and when it disappeared 
he was displeased.’ 

“Up to that time he had always remained in a cer- 
tain invariable inner condition of great joyfulness, with- 
out, however, having any understanding of inner spiritual 
things. On the days when that vision continued or a 
little before it began (for it lasted many days) there came 
a thought which troubled him, bringing before him the 


7 Confessions, 49. 


38 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


difficulty of his life as if some one had said to him within 
his soul, ‘And how can you endure such a life for the 
seventy years you have to live?’ But to that he an- 
swered, also in the inner places of his soul, with great 
force (because he felt the question came from the enemy), 
‘Oh, wretch, can you assure me of even one hour of life?’ 
And so he conquered the temptation and was at peace. 
And that was the first temptation he had after the one 
mentioned above.* And this happened when he was en- 
tering a church in which he heard every day high mass, 
vespers and compline all chanted. He had found in them 
great consolation and ordinarily he read during mass the 
passion of our Lord; always in his unchanging inner joy. 
But after the above mentioned temptation, there began in 
his soul a time of changing feelings; sometimes he was so 
insipid that he had no taste for prayer, nor in hearing mass 
nor in any other prayer which he made. And other times 
quite the contrary feelings arose within him, and that so 
suddenly that it seemed to him that he was freed from 
sadness and desolation as if some one should lift a cloak 
from a man’s shoulders. And here he began to drive 
away these inner changes which he had never experienced 
before and to say to himself, ‘What new life is this which 
we are commencing?’ At that time he conversed some- 
times with spiritual persons who believed in him and 
wanted to talk with him because, although he did not yet 
understand spiritual things, nevertheless in his talk he 
showed much zeal and a strong will to go forward in the 
service of God. There was in Manresa at that time a 
holy woman of many days and an ancient servant of God, 
known as such in many parts*of Spain; so much so that 
the King had once summoned her to talk with him about 
certain matters. This woman, talking one day with the 
new soldier of Christ, said to him, ‘Oh! would that my 
Lord Jesus Christ might appear to you some day!’ But 
® Apparently the temptation to kill the Moor. 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 39 


he was frightened by this, taking it materially and say- 
ing to himself, ‘How could Christ appear to me?’ He 
persevered in his habitual confessions and in taking com- 
munion every Sunday. 

“But he began to be much troubled by scruples. Be- 
cause, even though the general confession which he had 
made in Montserrat had been made very carefully and 
all in writing, nevertheless it seemed to him sometimes 
that he had not confessed some things, and that idea 
afflicted him very much because, though he confessed this 
idea itself, he found no inward satisfaction. And so he 
began to seek out spiritual men who might aid these 
scruples of conscience but nothing helped him, and at last 
a doctor of theology, who was preaching in the church 
of Manresa, a very spiritual man, told him one day in 
confession to write everything he could recollect. He did 
it and after confession his scruples of conscience came 
back, so that he was in great tribulation and although he 
knew that these things caused him great loss and that 
it would be well for him to free himself from them, he 
could not. He thought sometimes that there might be a 
cure in having his confessor order him in the name of Jesus 
Christ not to confess again any things in his past life and 
he wanted to have his confessor so order him, but he had 
not the boldness to say it to his confessor. But the con- 
fessor, without being told, ordered him not to confess 
anything in his past life unless it was a very clear, distinct 
sin in his memory. He did not profit at all by that order 
and remained troubled. At that time he lived in a room 
which the Dominican monks had given him in their con- 
vent and kept up his daily seven hours of prayer on his 
knees, rising always at midnight, and all other exercises 
of the spirit, but in all these he found no cure for the 
scruples of his conscience and many months passed in tor- 
ment. And once, when he was in great tribulation because 
of them, he took to prayer and in his fervour called aloud 


40 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


on God, saying, ‘Help me, Oh Lord, for I find no help in 
man nor in any other creature; though if I thought I could 
find help no work would seem too great for me. Show 
me, Lord, where to find help, because, even though it 
should be necessary to follow a little dog in order that he 
might lead me to the remedy, I would do it.’ 
“Possessed by these thoughts there came to him many 
times with great force, the temptation to throw himself 
into a large opening there was in his room close to the 
place where he prayed. But realizing that it was a sin to 
kill himself, he began to say aloud, ‘Lord, I will not do 
anything which is an offense to Thee,’ repeating those 
words many times. And there came to his memory the 
story of a saint who, to obtain from God something he 
much desired, went many days without food until he ob- 
tained it. And thinking of that a good while, at last he 
made up his mind to do it, saying to himself, that he would 
neither eat nor drink until God provided for him or he saw 
himself near to death: because if he saw himself so far in 
extremis that if he did not eat he must die, he determined 
that then he would beg bread and eat it. (This was a 
foolish plan, for in truth how could he in the very article 
of death either beg or eat bread?) That happened on a 
Sunday after he had communed and the whole week he 
persevered without putting anything in his mouth and 
without giving up his accustomed exercises, even going to 
divine services and praying on his knees at midnight, etc. 
But when the next Sunday arrived when it was necessary 
to go to make his confession, as he was wont to tell his 
confessor very much in detail what he had done, he told 
him also how in that week he had eaten nothing. The con- 
fessor told him to break his fast: and although he found 
himself still with force, nevertheless he obeyed his con- 
fessor and found himself that day free from his scruples 
of conscience. But the third day, which was a Tuesday, 
while he was praying he commenced to remember his sins 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 41 


and as if he were threading beads, he kept on passing in 
thought from sin to sin of his past life and it seemed to 
him that he was obliged to confess them again. But at the 
end of these thoughts there came to him disgust with the 
life he led and impulses to leave it. And with that, it 
_ pleased God that he awoke as if out of sleep. And as he 
already had some experience in the diversity of spirits by 
the lessons which God had given him, he began to regard 
the way in which that spirit had come and so determined 
very clearly not to confess any more anything of his past 
life,” and so from that day on he remained free from those 
torments of conscience; holding it for certain that our 
Lord had freed him by His mercy. 

‘“‘Aside from his seven hours of prayer he occupied him- 
self in aiding the souls of some who came to him seeking 
help in spiritual things and all the rest of the day not oc- 
cupied in these two things, he gave to meditation on the 
things of God and what he had read and heard. But when 
he came to go to bed, often great spiritual consolation 
came to him and intimations of divine things which made 
him lose a large share of the time destined for sleep— 
which was not much. And considering this, he thought 
that he had a certain time set aside for communion with 
God and in addition the rest of the day. And by this road 
he came to doubt if those intimations came from the good 
spirit, and he came to the conclusion that it was better to 
neglect them and sleep the hours allotted to sleep. And 
he did so. He still persevered in his determination to eat 
no meat and was so firm in it that he had no thought of 
changing it in any way. One day when he got up in the 
morning there appeared to him meat ready to be eaten; 
as if he saw it with his bodily eyes without any wish to 
eat meat preceding the appearance of it. And there came 
to him, at the same moment, a strong assent of his will to 
eat meat for the future. And though he recalled his for- 


®T. e., he concluded the devil was tempting him to despair. 


42 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


mer determination, he could not doubt that he ought to eat 
meat. Afterwards his confessor said he wondered if it was 
not a temptation, but he (Ignatius) examining the whole 
matter carefully, could not doubt that it was a sign. (5) 

“Tn those days God was treating him like a boy in school, 
teaching him and that because of his rudeness and gross 
mind either because there was no one to teach him or be- 
cause of the firm will which had been given him by God 
Himself for His service. At all events he clearly judged 
and has always judged that God was so teaching him. 
First if he doubted it he would think he was sinning 
against the divine majesty and then it can be seen by the 
five following points. 

“He was very much devoted to the Holy Trinity 
and offered prayer every day to the three persons sep- 
arately. And offering prayer to the most Holy Trinity 
the thought came to him ‘How would it be to offer four 
prayers to the Trinity?’ But the thought gave him little 
or no trouble as a thing of small importance. And stand- 
ing one day praying the hours of Our Lady on the steps 
of the monastery, his understanding began to be raised 
as if he saw the most Holy Trinity as the three keys of 
an organ and that with so many tears and sobs that he 
could not restrain them. And, taking part that morning 
in a procession, he could not until dinner time keep back 
the tears, nor, after dinner, cease to talk about the Trin- 
ity: and that with much joy and consolation, so that all 
his life the impression remained with him to feel great de- 
votion in offering prayer to the most Holy Trinity. 

“Once he saw in his understanding with great spiritual 
joy the way in which God had created the world, because 
he seemed to see a white thing from which issued rays and 
from that God made light. But he would not know how 
to explain these things, nor does he remember entirely 
well everything about that information which at that 
time God was impressing on his soul. 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 43 


“Also at Manresa, where he stayed almost a year 
after he began to be consoled by God and saw the fruit of 
his efforts to help souls, he gave up those extremes which 
he had before practiced and cut his nails and hair. One 
day when he was in the church of the monastery hearing 
mass and the body of Our Lord was raised, he saw, with 
the inner eyes, so to speak, rays of light which came from 
above. And although he cannot after so long a lapse of 
time explain it well, nevertheless what he saw clearly with 
the understanding was how Our Lord Jesus Christ was in 
that most Holy Sacrament.” 

“On many occasions and for a long time when in 
prayer he saw with the interior eyes the humanity of 
Christ and the figure which appeared to him was like a 
white body, neither very big nor very small, but he could 
not see any distinction of members. He saw that in Man- 
resa many times. If he should say twenty or forty he 
would not dare to judge that it was a falsehood. Another 
time he saw it when he was in Jerusalem and again when 
he was journeying near Padua. He also saw Our Lady 
in a similar form without distinguishing the parts of her 
body. Those things which he has seen gave so much con- 
firmation to his faith that he has often thought within 
himself that if he had not read the scriptures which teach 
us those things of the faith, he would determine to die 
for them solely because of what he has seen. 

“Once he went to a church which stood a little more 
than a mile from Manresa which was called, I think, 
St. Paul, and the road runs next to the river. And walk- 
ing and saying his prayers, he sat down for a little with 
his face toward the river. And thus sitting, the eyes of his 
understanding began to open and, without seeing any vi- 
sion, he understood and knew many things—as well spirit- 
ual things as things of the faith and things in the realm 
of letters and that with a brightness of illustration so great 


The mystery of transubstantiation. 


44 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


that they seemed to him entirely new things. And the 
details of what he then understood cannot be explained 
though they were many. All that can be said is that he 
received a clarity in his understanding of such a sort that 
in all the reasoning of his life up to the age of more than 
sixty-two years, collecting all the help he had received 
from God and all he has known and joining them into one, 
it does not seem to him that he has gained as much from all 
these advantages as from that single illumination when he 
sat by the river.” 

“And that left him with an understanding so enlightened 
that it seemed to him he was another man and that he had 


an intellect different from the one he had before. And ~ 


after this had lasted for some time, he went on his knees 
before a roadside cross which stood nearby to give thanks 
to God and there appeared to him the vision which had ap- 
peared to him many times but which he had never under- 
stood; the thing of which it has been said before that it ap- 
peared very beautiful with many eyes. But he saw plainly, 
being before the cross, that the thing had not as beauti- 
ful a colour as usual. And he recognized very clearly, with 
a powerful assent of the will, that it was the devil and 
since, although for a long time the devil continued to ap- 
pear to him often, he, as a sign of contempt, drove him 
away with a pilgrim staff he always carried in his hand.” 

“Once at Manresa when he was ill and a very high fever 
brought him to the point of death, so that he judged 
clearly his soul was about to take flight, there came to him 
the thought that he was a righteous man; at which he was 
so troubled that he did nothing but put forward his sins 
and that thought troubled him more than the fever, but 
he could not conquer that thought in spite of all the effort 
he made to conquer it. But, relieved a little from the 
fever, he began to call fervently to some ladies who had 


“Ignatius studied letters and theology thirteen years. 7 Confessions. 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 45 


come to visit him, that, for the love of God, if they saw him 
again at the point of death, they should cry out with loud 
voices saying to him ‘Sinner! Remember the offenses you 
have committed before God.’ ” 

Ignatius now tells two other instances of his experience 
in the face of death which occurred years later. And 
then resumes his story in regular order. 

“When winter came he fell seriously ill and to cure him 
the city put him in the house of the father of a certain 
Ferrera who has since become servant of Baltasar de 
Faria and there he was very well cared for. And because 
of the interest which many of the chief ladies took in him, 
they came to act as nurses at night and when he recov- 
ered from this illness he was left very weak and with 
frequent pains in his stomach. And for these reasons and 
because the winter was very cold, they made him wear 
more clothes and put on shoes and cover his head and 
so they made him two robes of gray cloth very thick and 
a head covering of the same colour. And at that time 
there were many days when he was very anxious to talk 
about spiritual things and to find veople who were ca- 
pable of doing it. Meanwhile the time was drawing near 
when he had decided to start for Jerusalem.’’** 


13 Confessions. 


CHAPTER IV 
LOYOLA’S OWN STORY: A PILGRIM AND A STUDENT 


‘“‘And so at the beginning of the year 1523 he left Man- 
resa for Barcelona to take ship. And though some com- 
panions offered themselves, he wished to go alone, because 
all his intent was to have God only as his refuge. And 
so one day, to some people who insisted strongly that, be- . 
cause he spoke neither Italian nor Latin, he had better 
take a companion, and saying how helpful a companion 
would be, he replied that, even if the son or brother of the 
Duke of Cardona wanted to go, he would not go in his 
company. Because he desired to cling to three virtues, 
charity, and faith and hope, and, if he had a companion, 
when he was hungry he would expect aid from him and 
when he fell down the companion would help him get up, 
and so he would trust in and love his companion and he 
wished to put all his trust and affection and hope in God 
alone. . . . And he desired to embark not only alone 
but without any provisions. And beginning to arrange 
for his passage, he persuaded the master of the ship to take 
him for nothing because he had no money, but on the 
condition that he brought some ship’s bread: otherwise 
he would by no means let him come on board. And when 
he started to arrange for the ship’s bread, he began to have 
great scruples, ‘Is that the hope and faith you put in God,’ 
etc. and he was much troubled and finally, not knowing 
what to do, . . . he determined to leave it to his confes- 
sor .. . The confessor told him to ask what was neces- 
sary and take it with him: and asking it of a lady, she 
asked him where he was going. He hesitated for awhile if 

46 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 47 


he should tell her and at last did not dare to say more than 
that he was going to Italy and to Rome. And she, as if 
smitten with astonishment, said, ‘You want to go to 
Rome?’ Because of those who go there no one knows 
how they return. (For she wished to say they gain little 
profit at Rome in the things of the spirit). And the rea- 
son he did not dare to say he was going to Jerusalem was 
for fear of vainglory; which fear beset him so much that 
he never dared say where he came from nor what his 
family was. At last, having gotten his ship’s biscuit, he 
embarked. But going down to the shore with five or six 
small pieces of silver money in his pocket, which had been 
given him at the doors of houses, for he lived by begging 
from house to house, he left them on a bench near the 
shore. And so he took ship after having spent a little over 
twenty days in Barcelona. While he was in Barcelona, he 
sought out, according to his habit, all spiritual persons, 
even though they were in hermitages far from the city, in 
order to talk with them. But neither in Barcelona nor in 
Manresa during all the time he was there, could he find 
persons who could help him as much as he desired: except 
in Manresa that woman of whom he has spoken who 
said she had asked God to let him see Christ. She alone 
seemed to him to enter deeply into spiritual things. And 
so after he had left Barcelona, he lost entirely that anxi- 
ety to seek out spiritual persons. 

“They had so strong a following wind that they crossed 
to Gaeta in five days and nights, though all the ship’s 
company were much afraid because it was tempestuous. 
And in all that country they were afraid of the pestilence. 
But when he disembarked he commenced to walk to- 
wards Rome. Of those who came in the ship, there joined 
company with him a mother, with a daughter dressed as a 
young man, and a little boy. They followed him; for they 
also were begging their way. Arriving at a village, they 
found a big fire and many soldiers around it, who gave 


48 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


them food, and much wine inviting them in such a way 
that it seemed they intended to warm them. Then 
they separated them, the mother and daughter eat- 
ing above in a room and the pilgrim and the boy in a 
stable. But at midnight, he heard loud screams coming 
from upstairs and rising he found the mother and daugh- 
ter down in the courtyard weeping bitterly and com- 
plaining that they had tried to do them violence. There 
came to him with that an impulse so great that he com- 
menced to cry out, ‘Is this tolerable?’ and similar com- 
plaints, which he uttered so effectively that all in the house 
were afraid and no one did them any harm. The boy had 
already run away and all three took up their journey in 
the night. And arriving at a city which was near by, they 
found the gates shut, and all three, wet through with the 
rain, passed the night in a church. In the morning they 
would not let them through the gates, and because they 
could not ask alms outside, they went to a castle which 
they could see near by. Meanwhile the pilgrim found 
himself used up and, as he could not walk any farther, the 
mother and daughter went on towards Rome. That day 
there came out of the city much people, and knowing that 
the lady of the place would come there, he presented him- 
self before her, saying that his illness was only weariness 
and beseeching her to let him enter to seek help. She 
granted it easily, and beginning to beg, he got many pen- 
nies and after he had recovered his strength there for two 
days he continued his journey and got to Rome on Palm 
Sunday. 

“Everybody who talked to him at Rome, when they 
knew that he had no money for the journey to Jerusalem, 
commenced to persuade him not to go to the Holy Land, 
affirming, with many particulars, that it was impossible to 
find passage without money. But he had a great certainty 
in his soul, so that he could not doubt that he would find a 
way to go to Jerusalem. And having received the benedic- 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 49 


tion of Pope Adrian the Sixth, he left eight or nine days 
after Easter to walk to Venice." He had six or seven gold 
ducats which they had given him for the passage from 
Venice to Jerusalem. And he had taken them, conquered 
somewhat by the fears they had put into his heart that 
he could not get across the sea without money. But two 
days after he left Rome, he began to see clearly that this 
had been a lack of confidence in God. So he was much 
weighed down by the thought that he had taken the ducats 
and he began to question whether it would not be better 
to get rid of them. At last he determined to use them 
freely on those he met who were poor. And he did it in 
such a fashion that he arrived at Venice with no more 
than a few small coins which he needed for that night. 

“During all that road to Venice on account of the guards 
against the plague, he slept in doorways and porticos. . . . 
Once when he was all alone just at dusk in a great plain, 
Christ appeared to him in the way he was accustomed to 
appear, as we have said above, and comforted him much. 
. . - When he arrived at Venice the guards came to the 
boat to examine the passengers one by one, but they stop- 
ped before they came to him. He sustained life in Venice 
by begging and he slept in the square of St. Mark, but he 
never wanted to go to the house of the Ambassador of the 
Emperor;* nor took any special pains to get money for 
his voyage, and he had great confidence in his soul that 
God would show him a way to go to Jerusalem and that 
strengthened him so much that no reasons and fears sug- 
gested to him could make him doubt. One day he ran 
across a rich Spaniard who asked him what he was doing 
and where he wanted to go, and, learning his intention, the 
Spaniard took him to dinner at his house and looked after 
him until the time came to sail. The pilgrim was accus- 
tomed since he was in Manresa, when he dined with other 

7375 miles away. * Also King of Spain. 


50 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


people, never to talk much at table except to answer 
briefly, but to listen to what was said and so to find some 
thing which gave him an opening to speak of God and 
when the meal was over he did it. And that was the rea- 
son why the good man with all his family became so much 
attached to him that they wanted him to stay with them 
and his host also took him to the Doge: that is to say, he 
got entrance and audience for him. The Doge when he 
had heard the pilgrim, gave orders to give him a passage 
in the government ship for Cyprus. 

“Although many pilgrims to Jerusalem had come that 
year, the greater part of them had gone home because 
of the new situation caused by the capture of Rhodes.® 
However, there were thirteen pilgrims in the ship which 
sailed first, and eight or nine were left for the ship of the 
governors. When this was about to start, the pilgrim 
was attacked by a high fever which, after he had been 
extremely ill for some days, left him the day the ship 
sailed. The people of the house asked the doctor if he 
could embark for Jerusalem and the doctor said he could 
embark to be buried, but he took ship and started that 
very day because he found himself very easy and com- 
mencing to get well. In that ship were committed openly 
certain obscene and filthy deeds which he reproved with 
severity. The Spaniards who were of the pilgrimage ad- 
vised him not to do this, because the sailors were talking 
of leaving him on an island. But it pleased our Lord that 
they arrived quickly at Cyprus from whence they went by 
land to another port called Las Salinas, which was ten 
leagues away. There they went on board the pilgrim ship, 
on which, however, he embarked nothing for his susten- 
ance except the hope he placed in God, as he had done in 
the other ship. During all this time Our Lord appeared 
to him very often, which gave him great consolation and 

*Taken by the Turks, 1522. 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY Sl 


force: generally it seemed to him he saw a large round 
thing as it were made of gold and that presented itself to 
him. After leaving Cyprus they reached Jaffa, and, taking 
up their journey to Jerusalem on donkeys as was the 
custom, two miles before they would arrive at Jerusalem, 
a Spaniard, apparently a nobleman, by name Diego 
Manes, with much feeling, said to all the pilgrims that in 
a short time they would arrive where they could see the 
holy city and that it would be well for all to make prepa- 
ration in their conscience and to do it in silence. And this 
seeming good to all, each began to collect his thoughts 
and, a little before arriving at the place where the city is 
seen, they dismounted because they saw the friars with 
the cross who were waiting for them. And at sight of the 
city the pilgrims received great consolation and judging 
by what the others said it was universal in all, with a joy 
which seemed supernatural and he has always felt the 
same feeling in visiting holy places. 

“His firm intention was to stay in Jerusalem visiting al- 
ways the sacred places and also he intended, besides these 
acts of devotion, to help souls: and for this reason he car- 
ried letters of recommendation to the guardian which he 
presented, and told the guardian his intention of remain- 
ing there for acts of devotion, but not the second part of 
his intent—to be of service to souls; because that he told 
no one, but about the first he had often talked. The 
guardian answered that he did not see how his staying 
could be arranged because the house was in such necessity 
that it could not provide for its own friars and he had 
determined for that reason to send some back with the pil- 
grims. And the pilgrim answered that he would ask for 
nothing from the house except that sometimes they would 
hear his confession. And with that the guardian said it 
could be arranged that way, but he must wait until the 
provincial came (I believe he was the head of the Order in 
that country). He was at Bethlehem. With this promise 


52 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the pilgrim felt secure and began to write letters to spirit- 
ual persons in Barcelona. When one was written and he 
was writing the other, the eve of the departure of the pil- 
grim company, they came to summon him in the name of 
the guardian and the provincial who had gotten back. And 
the provincial said to him in a very kind way that he knew 
of his good intention to stay among those sacred places 
and he had carefully thought about the affair and out of. 
his experience he had concluded that it was not best. Be- 
cause many had shared that desire and some of them had 
been taken by bandits and some killed and the Order was 
obliged to ransom the captives. And, for all those rea- 
sons, it seemed that he must be ready to go the next day. 
He answered that he was very fixed in his intention and 
decided not to fail to carry it out for anything; making 
it plain that he would still do it in spite of the provincial’s 
disapproval and any fear that was suggested: unless it 
became sinful to stay. To that the provincial answered 
they had authority from the Pope to send people away 
or let them remain according to their judgment and to shut 
out from communion those who would not obey and that 
in this case their judgment was that he ought not to stay, 
etc. 

“And when they wanted to show the papal bulls giv- 
ing them authority to excommunicate, he said it was not 
necessary to see them, that he believed their reverences, 
and since they had so decided with the authority they had, 
he would obey. And when this was settled, there came 
to him a great desire to go back to visit the Mount of 
Olives before he left; since it was the will of Our Lord 
that he should not stay among those holy places. In the 
Mount of Olives there is a stone from which Our Lord 
went up to heaven and one can see now the footprints 
left in the stone. And that was what he wanted to go 
back to see. And so, without saying anything or taking 
a guide (those who go without a Turk as a guide run great 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 53 


danger) he cleverly got rid of the others and went alone 
to the Mount of Olives. And the guards would not let 
him go in. He gave them a little knife from his writing 
case and after praying with much consolation there came 
to him the desire to go to Bethpage and when he arrived 
there he remembered that he had not well examined on 
the Mount of Olives on which side the imprint of the right 
foot was and on which side the left foot, and going back 
he believes he gave his scissors to the guards to let him 
goin. When they knew in the monastery that he had left 
without a guide the friars hastened to find him, and as he 
was coming down the Mount of Olives he met a Christian 
convert who worked in the monastery, who, with every 
sign of great anger, made motions as if he were about to 
give it to him with a big stick, and coming up he grab- 
bed him by the arm: but he went along easily. Going 
that road thus along side of the Christian convert, he re- 
ceived from Our Lord great consolation, for it seemed that 
he saw Christ all the way in the air above him. And that 
lasted until he arrived at the monastery. 

“They left the next day and arrived at Cyprus, where 
the pilgrims were separated among different ships. There 
were in port three or four ships for Venice: one was Turk- 
ish, another was very small and a third was a heavily 
laden ship belonging to a rich Venetian. Some of the pil- 
grims begged the captain of this ship to take the pilgrim, 
but the captain, when he learned the pilgrim had no 
money, was not willing, in spite of all their asking and 
praising him, etc. And the captain answered that if he 
was a saint, he might cross as Santiago crossed and that 
sort of reply. The same petitioners got permission very 
easily from the captain of the little ship. They left with 
a prosperous wind during the morning and ran into a great 
storm at evening, which scattered the ships and the big 
ship was lost near Cyprus and only the people saved, and 
the Turkish ship was lost with all on board in that storm. 


54 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


The little ship had a hard struggle, but finally reached a 
harbour in Apulia. And that was in the midst of winter, 
very cold and snowy, and the pilgrim had no other clothes 
but breeches of coarse cloth down to the knees, leaving his 
legs bare, and shoes and a jacket of black cloth much torn 
at the shoulders and a short cloak of cloth worn very thin. 
He arrived at Venice in the middle of January of the year 
1524, having been at sea after leaving Cyprus all the 
months of November and December and half of January. 
At Venice he found one of the two friends who had given 
him lodging before he started for Jerusalem, who gave him 
alms: fifteen silver julios and a piece of cloth which he 
doubled many times and wore over his stomach because of ~ 
the great cold. 

‘Since the said pilgrim had learned that it was not the 
will of God for him to stay in Jerusalem, he was always 
thinking what he ought to do and, in the end, he inclined 
on the whole to study some time in order to be able to help 
souls and he decided to go to Barcelona and so left Venice 
for Genoa. And one day when in the chief church of Fer- 
rara for his devotions, a poor man asked alms and he gave 
him a marquete, a piece of money worth five or six quat- 
rini. And after the first beggar came another, and he gave 
him a piece of money a little larger. And when the third 
came, the pilgrim had no coins but his silver julios, so he 
gave him one. And when the poor saw that he was giv- 
ing alms they did nothing else but come, and so he finished 
all the money he had and finally a whole crowd of poor 
came together to ask alms. He answered that they must 
excuse him for he had nothing more. 

‘“‘And so he left Ferrara for Genoa. On the road he fell 
in with some Spanish soldiers who treated him well that 
night and they expressed astonishment at his taking that 
road because it would lead him through the middle of both 
armies, French and Imperial, and they asked him to leave 
the high road and to follow another safe road they would 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 55 


show him. But he did not take their advice,* but going 
along the direct road he came across a village burnt and 
destroyed and so he found no one all day who could give 
him something to eat. But at sunset he arrived at an en- 
closed village and the guards seized him, thinking he was a 
spy, and taking him to a little house near the gate, they 
commenced to examine him as they are wont to do with 
suspected persons: and he answered to all questions that 
he knew nothing. And they stripped and searched him 
down to his shoes to see if he carried any letter. And 
when they were unable to learn anything from him in 
any way, they ordered him to come to the captain who 
would make him talk. And when he asked for his clothes 
they were not willing to give them back and took him as 
he was with only the breeches and jacket mentioned above. 
And the pilgrim looked on that as an image of the way 
in which they took Christ; although this was not a vision 
like the others. And they led him through three long 
streets and he went with no sadness but rather with con- 
tentment and joy. It was his custom to address every- 
body without distinction with ‘thou’ as an act of pious de- 
votion, because Christ and the apostles talked thus, etc. 
While on his way through those streets it came into his 
mind that it would be well to address the captain as ‘Senor’ 
and the thought was accompanied by some fear of the tor- 
ture they might put him to, etc. But when he recognized 
that it was a temptation, ‘since it is so’, he said to himself, 
‘I will not call him Sefor nor bow to him, neither will I 
take off my hat.’ 

“They came to the house of the captain and left him in 
a room below and after a while the captain talked with 
him. And he, without showing any sign of courtesy, an- 
swered in a few words and very slowly. And the cap- 
tain took him for a crazy man and said to those who had 
brought him, ‘This man has no sense. Give him what be- 

“Evidently because he thought it would be a sign of lack of trust in God. 


56 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


longs to him and put him out.’ On leaving the house im- 
mediately he found a Spaniard, who lived there, who 
took him to his house and gave him wherewith to 
break his fast and what he needed for the night And 
leaving in the morning, he walked until evening, when two 
soldiers in a tower saw him and came down to stop him. 
And when they had taken him to their captain, who was a 
Frenchman, the captain asked him among other things 
where he came from. And on hearing he was from Gui- 
puzcoa said, ‘I come from near there, for it seems it is 
near Bayonne’: and then he said, ‘take him and give him 
supper and treat him well.’ On that road from Ferrara to 
Genoa nothing else happened of importance and finally he 
came to Genoa, where he recognized a Biscayan called 
Portundo who had talked with him when he served in the 
court of the Catholic King. This man let him embark in 
a ship which was sailing to Barcelona in which he ran great 
danger of being taken prisoner by Andrea Doria, who gave 
chase to the ship. Doria was then a partisan of the 
French. 

“Arrived at Barcelona, he talked of his wish to study 
to Isabel Roser and with a teacher by the name of Ardé- 
balo who taught grammar. Both thoroughly approved 
and he offered to teach him for nothing, while she prom- 
ised to give him enough to live on. The pilgrim knew in 
Manresa a friar, if I remember right, of St. Bernard, a 
very spiritual man, and he wanted to go and stay with 
him in order to study and to be able to give himself more 
easily to spiritual things and also to help souls. And so 
he answered Isabel Roser and Ardébalo that he would ac- 
cept their offer if he did not find in Manresa the advan- 
tages he hoped to find. But when he went there he found 
the friar was dead and, returning to Barcelona, he com- 
menced to study with great diligence. 

“But one thing was a great hindrance to his progress. 
Whenever he commenced to commit to memory, as it is 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 57 


necessary to do in beginning the study of grammar, there 
came to him new understanding of spiritual things and 
new delight in them, so that he could not commit anything 
to memory nor drive away these importunate thoughts be- 
cause he was so reluctant to doso. And thinking this over 
many times, he said to himself; ‘when I am praying and 
when I am hearing mass these vivid understandings do not 
come to my mind’ and so little by little he recognized that 
this experience was a temptation. And after having 
prayed he went to the church of Holy Mary of the Sea 
near the master’s house, having asked the master to be 
good enough to listen a little in that church to what he 
had to say. And so, both being seated, he explained 
frankly to the master all that had happened in his soul 
and how little, for that reason, he had yet gained. He gave 
a solemn promise to the master saying ‘I promise you 
never to fail to listen to you for two years if I can find in 
Barcelona bread and water to sustain life.’ And after he 
had made that promise he was never troubled any more 
by those temptations. The pain in his stomach which had 
before attacked him in Manresa, because of which he had 
ceased to go bare-footed, had left him and he had no trou- 
ble with his stomach after he started for Jerusalem. And 
for that reason now that he was studying in Barcelona, he 
wanted to go back to his old penances and so he com- 
menced to cut holes in the soles of his shoes. He went 
on widening the holes little by little in such a way that 
_when the cold of winter came he was wearing only the 
uppers. 

“When two years of study were finished in which they 
said he had made great progress, the master told him he 
was ready to begin the study of the liberal arts and that 
he should go to the University of Alcala. However, he had 
himself examined by a doctor of theology who gave him 
the same advice, and so he parted for Alcala alone, al- 
though, if I remember rightly, he had already some com- 


58 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


rades. Arrived at Alcala he began to beg and to live by 
alms. And after he had been living thus for ten or twelve 
days, a clergyman and others who were standing with him 
in a group began to laugh and to give him some insults 
as is the custom to do to able bodied people who beg. And 
just at that moment the superintendent in charge of the 
new hospital of Taracana happened to pass and seeming 
to be sorry for Ignatius, called him and took him to the 
hospital; in which he gave him a room and all that was 
necessary. 

“He studied in Alcala about a year and a half and since 
he had arrived in lent of the year 1524 at Barcelona, where 
he studied two years, the year 1526 he arrived at Alcala 
and studied dialectics in Soto, physics in Albertus and 
theology in the Master of the Sentences. And while he 
was at Alcala he gave spiritual exercises and explained 
Christian doctrine and from this he gathered fruit for God. 
And there were many persons who grew in understanding 
of spiritual things and in liking for them. And others 
underwent various temptations, for example, one woman 
who, wishing to inflict discipline on herself by scourging 
could not do it because her hand was, at it were, held by 
force; and other similar things. These things aroused 
notice in the city, especially, because of the large assem- 
bly which gathered whenever he wished to explain Chris- 
tion doctrine. Immediately on arriving at Alcala he made 
the acquaintance of Don Diego de Equia, who lived in 
the house of his brother, who had a printing press in Al- 
cala, and they did not suffer him to want for anything. 
And also they helped him by their alms to maintain poor 
people and kept three companions of the pilgrim also in 
their house. Once coming to ask alms for some people in 
need, Don Diego said he had no money; but he opened a 
chest in which were various things and gave him bed 
spreads of various colours, candelabra, and other things 
of the sort; all of which, wrapped in a piece of linen, the 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 59 


pilgrim put on his shoulder and went to sell them to help 
the poor. 

‘“‘As has been said above, there was much talk in that 
country about what was happening in Alcala and some 
said one thing, others another. And the matter came to 
the ears of the Inquisition at Toledo, who came to Alcala. 
The pilgrim was informed by his host, who told him that 
they were ‘Alumbrados,” and that the Inquisition was 
commissioned to inflict capital punishment. And so they 
began to make inquiry and inquest into his life and. 
finally they went back to Toledo and left the proc- 
ess In the hands of the Vicar Figueroa, who is now with 
the Emperor. Some days later he called them and said 
he had made inquest for the Inquisition into their life, and 
had found no error in their teaching or morals, and, so far 
as that was concerned, they might continue to do what 
they were doing without any hindrance. But, as they 
were not members of a monastic order, it did not seem to 
him advisable for them to go around all dressed in the 
same way. It would be well, and he so ordered, for the 
pilgrim and Arteaga to wear black clothes and for the 
other two, Calixto and Caceres, to wear tawny and Juan- 
ico, who was a French lad, could remain as he was. The 
pilgrim said he would do what he was ordered, but he said, 
‘I don’t know what good these Inquisitors are, because the 
sacrament was refused the other day to so and so because 
_ he communicated every eight days and they made diffi- 
culty about giving it to me. We would like to know 
whether they have found any heresy in us.’ ‘No,’ said 
Figueroa, ‘if they had found any they would have burnt 
you.’ ‘Yes,’ said the pilgrim, ‘and they would burn you too 
if they found heresy in you.’ They dyed their garments as 
they had been ordered and, fifteen or twenty days later, 
Figueroa sent word to the pilgrim not to go barefoot but to 

° Heretics who claimed special light from the Holy Ghost. 


60 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


wear shoes, and he did it quietly as he did everything of 
the sort he was ordered to do. 

“Four months later the same Figueroa began again in- 
quiry about them. And beyond the usual causes I believe 
it was occasioned by the fact that a lady, married and of 
high rank, who had a special reverence for the pilgrim, in 
order not to be seen, came in the morning to the hospital 
veiled, as is the custom in Alcala, and when she was in 
the hospital took off her veil and went to the room of the 
pilgrim. But the inquisitors did nothing this time nor 
after the inquiry did they summon him or say anything 
to him. 

“Four months from that time when he was in a little 
house outside the hospital, a constable came to his door 
and said, ‘Come along with me a bit.’ And leaving him 
in the jail the constable said, ‘You do not go out from 
here until further orders.’ That was in the summertime 
and he was not strictly kept and many came to visit him. 
And among them was his confessor, and he had the same 
chance as when he was free to teach doctrine and give 
spiritual exercises. He was never willing to take an ad- 
vocate, although many were offered. He remembers es- 
pecially Dona Teresa de Cardenas, who sent to visit 
him and many times offered to get him out of prison. 
But he accepted nothing, saying always; ‘He for love 
of whom I came in here will take me out, if it seems 
best to Him.’ He remained in prison seventeen days 
without examination and without knowing the reason 
for his arrest. At the end of that time, Figueroa came 
to the jail and examined him about many things; even 
to asking him if he kept the sabbath, and he asked if he 
knew two women, mother and daughter, and he said ‘yes,’ 
and asked if he had known about their leaving before 
they left, he said, ‘No, under his oath.’ And then the 
vicar, putting his hand on his shoulder with signs of joy, 
said to him, “That was the reason why you are come here,’ 


LOYOLA’S OWN STORY 61 


Among the many people who were following the pilgrim, 
there were a mother and daughter, both widows, and the 
daughter very young and very beautiful, who were much 
interested in spiritual things; especially the daughter. 
So much so that, although noble women, they had started 
for the shrine of Saint Veronica at Jaén on foot, without 
attendants, and I don’t know whether begging their way 
or not. And this made a great stir in Alcala, and Doctor 
Ciruelo, who was their guardian, thought the prisoner 
had induced them to go and for that he had been made 
a prisoner. Then when the prisoner heard what the vicar 
had said, he said to him, ‘Do you want me to talk more 
fully about this affair?’ The vicar said ‘Yes.’ Then you 
must know,’ said the prisoner, ‘that these two women 
urged upon me many times that they wanted to go all 
through the world to care for the poor; now in one hospital 
and now in another. And I always dissuaded them from 
this intention because the daughter was so young and 
beautiful and I said to them that, if they wanted to visit 
the poor, they could do it in Alcala and go with the most 
holy sacrament when it was carried to the sick.’ And 
when the conversation was finished, Figueroa went away 
with the notary who had taken it all down in writing. 
“At that time Calixto was in Segovia, and when he 
heard of the imprisonment of the pilgrim, although he was 
just recovering from a severe illness, he came to join him 
in jail. But the pilgrim said it would be better to go and 
see the vicar, who treated him well and said he would send 
him to the jail because it was necessary for him to remain 
there until those women came back to see if they con- 
firmed what had been said. Calixto was in the jail some 
days, but the pilgrim, seeing that confinement was bad for 
his health because he was not yet entirely well, got him 
released by the help of a doctor who was a great friend. 
From the day he entered the jail until they released him 
forty two days passed; at the end of which the two devo- 


62 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


tees having returned, the notary came to the jail to read 
the sentence that he was free and that they should dress 
like the other students and that they should not talk 
about things of the faith for four years,” when they should 
have studied more; because they did not know the liberal 
arts; because of a truth the pilgrim knew most and his 
knowledge was not well-grounded and that was the first 
thing he said when he was examined. 

“He was left a little in doubt after this sentence what 
he should do, because it seemed as if they had closed the 
door to helping souls and that without giving him any 
reason except that he had not studied. And at last he 
determined to go to the Archbishop of Toledo, Fonseca, 
and put the thing into his hands. He left Alcala and 
found the archbishop in Valladolid, and, recounting frankly 
what had happened, said to the archbishop that although 
he was not under his jurisdiction and not obliged to obey 
his sentence, nevertheless he would do what he ordered 
(he addressed the archbishop as thou, as he was accus- 
tomed to do to all). The archbishop received him very 
well and, understanding that the pilgrim wanted to go to 
Salamanca, said that in Salamanca he had friends and a 
college. He offered to do everything and ordered four 
pieces of gold to be given to him.”* 


° This is a mistake. The sentence reads three years. Scripta p. 621. 
* Confessions. 


CHAPTER V 


AT THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES AND IN THE HANDS 
OF THE INQUISITION 


Up to this point in the life of Ignatius Loyola it has 
seemed best to let him tell his own story, not only because 
of fear of marring his naive recital, but also because we 
have no other important information about what hap- 
pened to him during this crisis of his life. That he him- 
self knew this was the crisis of his life is shown by the fact 
that he devoted more than half his confessions to the 
three years which passed between his wound at Pam- 
plona and his beginning to study at Barcelona, and 
crowded fourteen years into the rest of it. 

From the time of his return to Barcelona as a student 
after his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, we begin to get pieces 
of important and trustworthy information from other 
sources, and it seems wise to combine these into a nar- 
rative with citations and paraphrases from his Confes- 
sions. There are indeed two documents which throw some 
small light on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. These are 
the accounts of the journey given by Peter Fiissli of 
Zurich and Philipps von Hagen of Strassbourg; two of 
the twenty-one pilgrims of five different nationalities who 
went to Palestine when Loyola went. ‘Their accounts 
give many picturesque details of pilgrim experience, but do 
not mention Loyola. He spoke no language but Spanish 
and Basque, and they could therefore have no inter- 
course with him. Nor could these German burgher 
patricians, men of the ordinary type of piety who loved 
the sights of Venice, a chance to see more of the world, 

63 


64 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


and a good glass of wine, have any particular sympathy 
for one absolutely absorbed as Ignatius was in the things 
of the soul and therefore scornful of the pleasures of this 
life. He saw the wonders of God, to use the phrase of 
Kant, in the starry heavens above him and the moral 
world within him; beyond that he saw only his fel- 
low-men and the great battle going on between God and 
the devil. When the disciples came to show Christ the 
buildings of the temple, he saw no architectural splendour 
but only the judgment of God on sin and he said, “See 
ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall 
not be left here one stone upon another.” The visions 
God showed continually to the “inner eyes”* of Ignatius, 
filled him with an ecstasy which paled the glories of Rome 
and Venice until he did not see them. 

The arrival of Ignatius at Venice on his way back to 
Jerusalem marks a stage in the development of his soul 
related in his Confessions. His conversion began with the 
wish to rival the saints in self-denial and in penance for 
his sins. Then he wished to practice these austerities to 
please God. His ideal in all this was a solitary one and 
the Christian life seemed to him to lie entirely between 
himself and God. Whether he should enter a very strict 
monastery or wander about the world as a mendicant, 
human companionship did not at first appeal to him. He 
was never disappointed in God when he sought help from 
Him, but he was much disappointed with what he got from 
people supposedly very wise and holy and he finally 
ceased to consult them. He refused to accept a com- 
panion for his pilgrimage. 

On the contrary, before he left Manresa, people had 
begun to come to him for help and in giving it he evi- 
dently found strength and comfort. Reflecting on this 
during the long journey to Jerusalem, he formed the 
secret purpose of devoting his life to helping souls in 


* His own phrase. Confessions, p. 54. 


AT THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES 65 


Jerusalem; as we should say of being a missionary to 
the Mahommedans. When that door was closed he de- 
cided during the voyage back to Venice to devote his life 
to trying to spread to others the joy and peace in his own 
soul. To do this, he realized that he needed more knowl- 
edge and the beginning of getting knowledge in those 
days was the ability to understand Latin; for none but 
the most elementary instruction was anywhere given in 
any Other language. We see, therefore, the penitent and 
mystic suddenly turning into a student, and, although 
over thirty years old, poring over his Latin grammar 
with children. This man who once let his hair and nails 
grow wild like a hermit, was not only caring for them 
in order to be less impeded in helping his fellows, but he 
had changed his hermit’s heart and now eagerly sought 
not only persons whom he might help in religion, but 
companions who might aid him in Christian life and work. 

Of these last he found in the two years of his stay in 
Barcelona three: Calixtus de Sa and Lope de Caceres, 
both from Segovia, and Juan de Arteaga. To them there 
joined himself in Alcala a young Frenchman, Juan Rein- 
alde, a wounded page of the Viceroy of Navarre, found 
by Ignatius in the hospital. Ignatius found during 
these school days in Barcelona not only comrades but also 
pupils who wished to learn the things God had taught 
him: some eight or ten ladies, wealthy and of high social 
position. 

When he went to the University of Alcala, his three 
friends followed him, and all began to wear very simple 
clothes: a long narrow robe of coarse gray cloth and a 
gray cap. Ignatius went barefooted. In the intervals 
of their studies they began to gather around them fol- 
lowers who wished their help. ‘These were mainly women, 
as in Barcelona. But, unlike the learners of Barcelona, 
they were mainly from the poorer, many from the poorest, 
classes of the people. We have already heard from the 


66 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


lips of Ignatius himself how this brought him and his 
companions under the suspicion of heresy. We know 
moe about these three inquiries at Alcala than Ignatius 
did, because we have what he was never allowed to see, 
the depositions of the witnesses examined. In all the 
depositions some thirty people are named as among the 
visitors or disciples of Ignatius and his friends, and, in 
addition, one of the deponents said, “Some students came 
to the hospital asking for Loyola,” and another, after 
mentioning a number of names added, “and other women 
and girls came.” All those who regularly engaged in 
spiritual exercises under Loyola and his comrades at 
Alcala were women and women of the humbler classes, 
wives of a baker, a saddler, a wine-seller, a weaver, etc. 
Their depositions suggest very simple and even ignorant 
people. The more intelligent depositions show that he 
“taught them the commandments and the articles of the 
faith, and explained the mortal sins and the use of the five 
senses and the powers of the soul in religious experience 
and other good thoughts about the service of God. He 
taught these very well and explained them by St. Paul 
and the other saints and bade them examine their con- 
sciences twice every day and confess and take communion 
at the beginning of every week.’’* He warned them that 
in the service of God they must meet temptations of the 
enemy and showed them how to examine their conscience 
beginning on their knees with this prayer: ‘My God, 
my Father, my creator, thanks and praise I give Thee for 
the great gifts Thou has given me, and I hope will give 
me. I pray Thee by the merits of Thy passion, grant me 
the grace to examine my conscience well.’ 

On the third inquest, after Loyola and his companions 
had been in Alcala about nine months, some new facts 
were brought out before the vicar in regard to the effects 
of their teaching on many of their followers. Some of 

* Scripta p. 609. *Scripta p. 612. 


AT THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES 67 


these women, while listening to Ignatius, fell suddenly 
from joy into deep depression of spirits and then into 
fainting fits, where they either lost consciousness or fell 
down and rolled upon the ground in convulsions mixed 
with nausea. The vicar, when he went to see Ignatius 
in the episcopal jail, asked him not only about the noble 
ladies who had gone on pilgrimage, but about these 
seizures of his penitents. The vicar has recorded that 
Loyola said he had seen these fainting fits in five or six 
women and he suggested that “the cause of them is that, 
because of the amelioration of their lives and the giving 
up of their sins, they are attacked by great temptations, 
now from the devil, now from their kin and that these 
cause the fainting fits because of the repugnance they 
feel within themselves. He had consoled them, bidding 
them stand firm in these temptations and torments and 
saying that if they did, within two months they would not 
feel any of these temptations. He said this because in 
the matter of temptations it seemed to him that he knew 
about it from his own personal experience; though he 
had never had these fainting fits.’’* 

Such results of religious stimulation are of course in 
no sense peculiar to Loyola and his disciples. If we pass 
over more than three hundred years to the middle of the 
eighteenth century, we find similar effects from the 
preaching of a man who was the very opposite in every 
respect to Loyola—John Wesley. He records in his 
journal a number of instances of such results of his own 
ministrations and those of his followers; only the nervous 
reactions were more violent and more widespread be- 
cause the audiences were larger. 

Here is a written account from an eye witness of one 
of these scenes.” “I believe there were present three 
times more men than women. The greatest number of 
those who cried or fell down were men, but some women. 

“Scripta, I, 619. 5 Journal IY 318. 


68 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


. . . I stood up on a pew seat, as did a young able bodied, 
fresh, healthy country man. But in a moment when he 
seemed to think of nothing less, down he dropped with 
a violence inconceivable. I heard afterwards the stamp- 
ing of his feet ready to break the boards as he lay in 
strong convulsions at the bottom of the pew. Among 
several that were struck down in the next pew was a man 
who was as violently seized as he. . . . Almost all in 
whom God laid his hand turned very red or almost 
black.”’® 

Many of Wesley’s friends disliked these things very 
much and wrote to him protesting about them, but he held 
they were of God, and in one meeting led his followers 
in praying “for forgiveness for blaspheming God’s work 
among us, imputing it either to nature, the force of imag- 
ination and animal spirits or even to the delusions of 
the devil.”’ In one case at least he did not attribute these 
physical reactions to religious ideas to the power of God 
convicting of sin. He agreed with Loyola in attributing 
them to the efforts of the devil to maintain his hold over 
the soul. He was preaching in a crowded chapel and 
‘‘a vehement noise arose, none could tell why, and shot 
like lightning through the congregation. The people 
rushed upon each other with the utmost violence. The 
benches were broken in pieces. In about six minutes, all 
being calm, I went on with my preaching. . . . None can 
account for it without supposing some preternatural in- 
fluence. Satan fought that his kingdom should not be 
taken away from him.”’* 

It is noticeable that these faintings on the part of the 
women at Alcala are the only instances of such violent 
convulsive nervous reactions to preaching, recorded in 
the ministrations of Loyola or of the Jesuit missioners 
who during his life incorporated his spirit and followed 
his instructions. (6) It seems as if we might divine 

° Everton, 1759. 7 Tyerman III 531. 


AT THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES 69 


here another of the many instances in which Ignatius 
learned by experience what to do and what not to do in 
the care of souls. 

One physical reaction indeed, the Jesuit preachers who 
were the voices of Ignatius did produce very frequently. 
His missioners who fifteen years or so after this, stirred 
profoundly Venice, Parma, Florence, Palermo,” Messina, 
Oporto, Salamanca, Saragossa, Valladolid, Valencia, 
Madrid and scores of smaller places, very often moved 
their hearers to tears and mention it in their reports as 
a normal result of preaching which was blessed of God.° 
When towards the end of the life of Ignatius, his mis- 
sioners began to preach in Germany, they were quick 
to note the temperamental difference of their new au- 
diences as compared with the thousands who crowded to 
hear them in Italy, Spain and Portugal. ‘The first 
preachers sent to the Viennese College of the Order used 
the tones of voice they had been wont to use in Italy. 
Later they wrote to Rome that these tones were not ac- 
ceptable in Germany because that people like the preacher 
to preach quietly without great changes of voice and 
gesture.’”® 

When Ignatius withdrew from the University of Alcala, 
to follow his comrades to the University of Salamanca, the 
little band had put away one of the things which gave 
offense to public opinion: the wearing of a common dress 
which suggested that they were members of a monastic 
order. We know from other sources that there was a 
great deal of feeling among orthodox people about cor- 
rect monastic costume. In one of the colloquies of Eras- 
mus, published about this time, we find the following 
passage. “The Butcher. If anybody sees a Carthusian 
in a dress not of the order . . . how he trembles and falls 
into a fright lest the earth should open and swallow them 
both up, one for wearing, the other for looking, at the 

® Pol. Passim. °Pol. III 279, 


70 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


wrong dress. The Fishmonger. So if any one sees a 
Franciscan with a girdle without knots, or an Augustinian 
girt with a woolen one instead of a leather one, or a Car- 
melite without one, or a Rhodian with one, or a Franciscan 
with whole shoes on his feet, or a Cruciferian with half 
shoes on: will he not set the whole town in an uproar?””° 

This cause of suspicion and scandal had now been re- 
moved with the help of the episcopal vicar, for Loyola 
tells us “When they gave sentence in Alcala that they 
must be dressed like students the pilgrim said: ‘When 
you bade us dye our clothing we did it, but now we can- 
not do what you bid us because we have not the where- 
withal to buy.’ And so the vicar himself provided them 
with garments and hats and the rest of a student’s cos- 
tume and they left Alcala dressed in that manner.”” 

As he had passed beyond the jurisdiction of the bishop’s 
court, Ignatius intended to begin again “‘to help souls.” 
But he had no chance to carry out the intention, to forget 
the bishop’s advice. Although he had changed his dress 
and his residence, he had not changed the atmosphere of 
suspicion around him and soon after his arrival at his 
new university he met a persecution much more hostile 
and deadly than that of Alcala. 

There was at Salamanca a convent of Dominicans. 
Many of the Dominicans were always ready to give warn- 
ing against heresy, and inclined to be proud of the popu- 
lar pun on their name which made them Domini Canes, 
dogs of the Lord. It may be suspected that they had 
perhaps a little feeling that they would show the right 
way of handling heretics to the blundering inquisitors of 
the secular clergy in the vicar’s court at Alcala, who had 
let these dangerous people off so easily. So they laid a 
snare for Ignatius in which, if he had been as much of a 
heretic or as much of a simpleton as they thought, his 
small knowledge of technical theology might have fatally 

**TIcthyophagia. Bailey’s Trans. II, 291. ™ Confessions. 


AT THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES 71 


entangled him. His native boldness, simplicity and shrewd 
knowledge of men, saved him from the dungeons of the 
Inquisition. These were then in Spain easy to get into 
and their hinges were stiff in turning outward. All we 
know of this affair comes from him, so we will let him 
tell the story in his own words: 

“He made his confession in Salamanca to a friar of 
St. Dominic and, ten or twelve days after his arrival, his 
confessor said, ‘The fathers of the house want to talk with 
you,’ and he said, ‘In the name of God.’ ‘Then,’ said the 
confessor, ‘it will be well for you to come there to dinner 
Sunday, but I must tell you they want to know from you 
many things.’ And so on Sunday he went with Calixto 
and after dinner the subprior, in the absence of the prior, 
with the confessor, and, if I remember rightly, with an- 
other friar, went with them into a chapel and the sub- 
prior with great affability began to say what good news 
he had of their life and habits, that they were preaching 
like the apostles and that he would be glad to know these 
things more particularly. And so he began to ask what 
they had studied. And the pilgrim replied, ‘I am the 
one amongst us who has studied the most,’ and he gave 
a plain account of the little he had studied and how small 
a foundation of general learning was beneath it. ‘Well, 
then, what do you preach?’ ‘We do not preach,’ said the 
pilgrim. ‘We talk familiarly with some people about the 
things of God, as, for instance, at dinner with people who 
invite us.’ ‘But,’ said the friar, ‘about what things of 
God do you talk? That is what we want to know.’ ‘We 
talk,’ said the pilgrim, ‘now of one virtue and again of 
another, praising them, and now of one vice and again of 
another, blaming them.’ ‘You are not educated men,’ said 
the friar, ‘and yet you talk of virtues and of vices and 
nobody can talk on this subject except in one of two ways, 
either by education or by the Holy Spirit. You do not 
talk by education, therefore you do it by the Holy Spirit, 


72 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


% 


and we want to know what you get from the Holy Spirit?’ 
Just at this point the pilgrim ceased to reply, that way 
of arguing not seeming to him very good, and, after keep- 
ing silence for awhile, he said it was not necessary to 
talk any more about the subject. When the friar, insist- 
ing, said ‘Nowadays when there are so many errors of 
Erasmus and of many others in the air which have led 
astray the world, are you not willing to declare what you 
say?’ The pilgrim replied, ‘Father, I will not say more 
than I have said, except before my superiors who have the 
right to demand it of me.’ 

“Before that, the friar had asked why Calixto came 
dressed as he was. He wore a short loose coat and a big 
sombrero on his head and a staff in his hand and boots 
halfway up his legs and, because he was very big, he 
looked very clumsy. The pilgrim told how they had been 
arrested in Alcala and ordered to dress like students and 
his comrade because it was very warm weather had given 
his mantle to’a poor clergyman. Here the friar mut- 
tered between his teeth, giving signs that he was not 
pleased. ‘Charity begins at home.’ The subprior not 
being able to get another word out of the pilgrim, said, 
‘Well, then, you stay here and we’ll make you talk about 
everything.’ And so all the friars hurried away. At 
first, when the pilgrim asked if they wanted them to stay 
in the chapel or where they wanted them to stay, the sub- 
prior answered that they should stay in the chapel. Then 
the friars had all the gates closed and sent word, as it 
seems, to the judges. However, the two remained in the 
monastery three days without any one from the courts 
of justice speaking to them. They ate in the refectory 
with the friars. And nearly always their room was filled 
with friars who came to visit them and the pilgrim talked 
always as he was wont to talk, so that there was a sort 
of division among them and there were many who favoured 
the prisoners. 


AT THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES 73 


“At the end of three days a notary came and took them 
to jail. And they did not put them with the criminals 
below, but in a room higher up where, because the room 
was old and unused, there was much dirt. And they fas- 
tened both with the same chain, each by a foot, and the 
chain was fastened to a post in the middle of the house. 
And all that night they kept vigil. The next day, when 
it was known in the city that they were in prison, some- 
thing to sleep on was sent to them and necessary food in 
abundance. And many came to visit them, and the pil- 
grim continued his spiritual exercises by talking of God, 
etc. The bachelor of Theology, Frias, came to examine 
them each separately and the pilgrim gave him all his 
manuscripts, which were “The Exercises,” to examine. 
And when the bachelor asked the pilgrim if he had com- 
panions, the pilgrim said yes, and they were at Salamanca 
and then men went by the order of the bachelor and 
brought to the jail Caceres and Arteaga, but they left 
Juanico, who afterwards became a friar. But they did 
not put them on the upper floor with the two, but below 
where the ordinary prisoners were. In this situation also 
the pilgrim was not willing to have an advocate to defend 
them. 

“And some days afterwards he was called before the 
judges, four in number, the three doctors Sanctisidoro, 
Paravinhas and Frias and the Bachelor Frias, all of whom 
had seen “The Exercises.’ And they asked him many 
things; not only about The Exercises, but about theology, 
about the Trinity and the sacrament, how he understood 
those articles of the faith. And, ordered by the judges, 
he made his first response and he spoke in such a way 
that they found nothing to blame in him. The Bachelor 
Frias who showed himself more zealous in the matter 
than the others, put to him a case of canon law and he 
was obliged to reply to all asked, saying always first that 
he did not know what the authorities said about these 


74 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


things. Then they ordered him to explain the first com- 
mandment in the way he was used to explain it. He set 
himself to do it and did it at such length and said so 
much that they had no desire to ask him any more. Be- 
fore that, when they were talking of “The Exercises,” the 
judges insisted a great deal on a single point which was 
at the beginning of The Exercises; to wit, when an evil 
thought is a venial sin and when it is a mortal sin. And 
the trouble was because, without being educated, he tried 
to define that difference. He answered, ‘Make up your 
minds whether it is true or not, and if it is not true 
condemn it.’ At last they went away without condemn- 
ing anything. 

‘“‘Among the many people who came to the jail to talk 
to him there came once Don Francisco de Mendog¢a, who 
now is called Cardinal of Burgos, and he came with the 
Bachelor Frias. Asking him familiarly how he got on 
in prison and if he found it hard to be a prisoner, the 
pilgrim answered, ‘I will answer as I answered today to a 
lady who uttered words of compassion on seeing me in 
prison; I said to her: ‘You show that you have no wish 
to be put in prison for the love of God. Does prison then 
seem to you so terrible? I tell you there are not in Sala- 
manca so many fetters and chains as I desire to bear for 
the love of God!’ It happened at that time that the 
prisoners in the jail had a chance to escape and all fled; 
but the two comrades who were with them did not flee 
and when in the morning they were found with the doors 
unlocked, it gave great edification to all and made much 
talk in the city and so they immediately gave them for 
prison a house which stood near the jail. 

‘After they had been shut up twenty-two days, they 
were called to hear the sentence; which was that no error 
had been found in their doctrine and no evil in their life 
and so they could do as they had done, teaching doctrine 


AT THE SPANISH UNIVERSITIES 75 


and talking about the things of God without, however, 
defining at any time this is a mortal sin or that is a venial 
sin, until they had studied for four years more. When 
the sentence had been read the judges took a very friendly 
attitude as if they were very anxious to have it accepted. 
The pilgrim said he would do all the sentence commanded, 
but that he could not accept it because without condemn- 
ing him in anything, they closed his lips so that he could 
not help his neighbours so far as he was able. And in 
spite of the insistence of Doctor Frias, who made a great 
show of friendliness, the pilgrim said nothing except that, 
so long as he was in the jurisdiction of Salamanca, he 
would do what he was ordered to do. Then they were 
taken out of prison and he began to put himself in the 
hands of God and to think what he ought to do. And 
he concluded it was very difficult to stay in Salamanca 
because it seemed that the door to helping souls was closed 
by that order forbidding him to distinguish between a 
venial sin and a mortal sin. And so he made up his mind 
to go to Paris to study.” 

In spite of his experience in two prisons, Loyola “re- 
mained fixed in his desire to help souls and for that pur- 
pose first to study and then to add to his company some 
who shared this purpose besides keeping those comrades 
he had gained already. Determined to go to Paris, he 
arranged with his comrades to wait where they were while 
he went to Paris to see if he could find means for them 
- to join him and study there.”’* 

No one of them came to join him. The French lad 
Juanico became a monk, Calixto was sent by one of Loy- 
ola’s noble patronesses to the court of Portugal to see if 
he could get one of the fellowships given for Paris by 
the King. He did not get it, and returning into Spain 
went twice to India, from whence he returned very rich 
to lead a life of luxury and display in Salamanca. Caceres 


13 Confessions. 18 Confessions. 


76 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


went back to his native city of Segovia and lived in a 
way which did not suggest any serious religious purpose. 
Arteaga, twelve years after Loyola left him in Salamanca, 
was given a bishopric in the Indies and wrote to Loyola 
offering to give it to one of the Company of Jesus re- 
cently formed. Loyola refused, because he wished none 
of the Company to take church appointments. Arteaga 
therefore took the bishopric and died in his diocese. 
This disappointment over his comrades was repeated 
at Paris, where soon after his arrival, he gained three other 
comrades, Spaniards, who for one reason or another did 
not continue with him. One finally became a Carthusian 
monk, another starting on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem was 
ordered to Spain by the Pope through family influence, 
and became a canon of Toledo. We do not know the 
fate of the third. Apparently up to the time of going to 
Paris Ignatius had not yet learned completely the art of 
binding men fast to common purpose under his leader- 
ship, in which he finally became such a master of souls. 


CHAPTER VI 


SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS AND THE COMRADES HE 
GAINED THERE 


“Many leading citizens made a great effort to persuade 
him not to go, but they never could succeed in it and so 
fifteen or twenty days after he was set free, he started to 
walk to Barcelona driving before him a donkey on whose 
back he had tied the bundle of his books. At Barcelona 
all who knew him tried. to dissuade him from going to 
France because of the danger of war.” * They even told 
him, as he recalled years afterwards’ that Frenchmen 
were putting Spaniards on spits to roast them. But he 
met none of these prophesied dangers on his solitary walk 
of about a month to Paris, and on the third of March 
wrote this letter to Agnes Pascual of Barcelona, “May 
the true peace of Jesus Christ our Lord visit and protect 
our souls. 

“Considering the great good will and love which you 
have always had for me in God Our Lord, and which you 
have shown in deed, I have thought to write you this 
letter to let you know about my journey since I left you. 
_ With favourable weather and in entire health I arrived 
by the grace and goodness of God Our Lord, in this city 
of Paris the second of February; where I shall stay study- 
ing until the Lord orders me to do something else. 

“TI send my best remembrances to Juan and tell him 
always to obey his parents and keep the festivals of the 


* Confessions. * Probably he smiled. 
77 


78 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Church and he will live long upon the land and also in 
heaven. 

“Give my best remembrances to your neighbour. May 
her good will and love through God Our Lord never leave 
me. May the Lord of the world repay her and may He 
always be in our souls through His infinite goodness in 
order that His will and wish may accomplish itself in us. 
From Paris March 3rd, 1528. 


“Poor in goodness, 
“Tenigo.” 


When he arrived at Paris, Ignatius had a bill of ex- 
change on Barcelona for twenty-five escudos. This was 
enough to live simply for a year without the need of 
begging; which he had found at Barcelona and Alcala 
was a great interruption to his studies. He cashed his 
bill of exchange and gave the money to another Spaniard 
at the inn where he stopped, to keep safe for him. The 
motive for this was probably the desire by confidence to 
win the confidence of the other Spaniard whom he evi- 
dently hoped to gain as a companion in his work. 

There were forty-nine colleges in the University of 
Paris, of which three were frequented by Spaniards and 
Portuguese; Montaigu, Sainte Barbe, Coquerel. He in- 
scribed for Montaigu. Why we do not know, for Ignatius 
devoted only half as much space in his Confessions to 
his seven years’ experience at Paris as he devotes to half 
that time spent at Barcelona, Alcala and Salamanca. He 
tells us that he studied in Montaigu the humanities, be- 
cause he found that his two years’ work at Barcelona had 
not given him a well-grounded knowledge of Latin. 

Montaigu was an ancient college dating from the be- 
ginning of the fourteenth century. There were two sorts 
of students, the poor and the rich. The poor were an 
organized community of students for the priesthood who 
were supported by the College and what they could beg 


SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS 79 


to supplement it. Tse rich were ordinary pensioners who 
paid their board and fees. The two sets of scholars were 
kept entirely apart. The discipline inflicted on the poor 
was terribly severe and their food reduced to the lowest 
terms. Erasmus had been a poor and he wrote, two years 
before Ignatius entered, a bitter account of what he had 
to undergo thirty-seven years before. “But what with 
hard beds, by bad and spare diet, late and hard studies, 
within one year’s space, of many young men full of hope, 
some are killed, others are blinded, others are driven 
crazy. . . . Some of whom I know very well.” Appar- 
ently this severity and asceticism extended from the poor 
to the rich, for Erasmus adds: ‘Neither did this cruelty 
only destroy mean persons but many gentlemen’s sons 
too and spoiled many a hopeful genius. . . . In the very 
depth of winter a morsel of bread was given them for 
breakfast, and as for their drink, they must draw out of 
a well of bad water. I have known many that were 
brought to such a state of ill health that they have never 
got over it to this day. There were chambers on the 
ground floor in which none ever slept but he either got 
his death or some grievous distemper. I shall say noth- 
ing of the unmerciful whippings even of innocent per- 
sons. . . . Nor shall I take notice how many rotten eggs 
were eaten nor how much sour wine was drunk. Per- 
haps these things may be mended now, but ’tis too late 
for those that are dead already or carry about an infected 
body.’’® 

This situation, harsh enough even with all allowance 
for the exaggeration of a chronic grumbler, was slightly 
amended when Loyola entered Montaigu, but the best 
modern authority says: ‘During all the sixteenth cen- 
tury life there remained terrible.’’* 

Loyola learned (as he says himself) much at Paris and 

*Erasmus, Colloquies, Bailey Trans. II, p. 304, 306. ‘ Godet, VII. 


80 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


probably he learned partly from what he saw at Mon- 
taigu, the tender paternal care for the health of all his 
spiritual children from the professed to the youngest 
novice, which was so marked in his later life. 

He joined the college of Montaigu as an externe and 
continued to live at the lodging house or inn where he 
had first put up. But misfortune came to him. Soon 
after Lent, he found he was penniless because his Spanish 
friend had industriously spent in a few weeks, the money 
which would have lasted Ignatius for a year. He had to 
leave his lodging house for the poorhouse of St. Jacques 
which was so far from Montaigu that he was obliged to 
miss some of his classes. The first scholastic exercise 
began at five in the morning, work ended at eight in the 
evening and the gates of the hospital closed on the stroke 
of Ave Maria. In addition his begging took up so much 
time that he made little progress in his studies. He tried 
without success to get a place as servant to some pro- 
fessor. One day when he was about hopeless a Spanish 
friar said it would be better for him to go to Flanders 
to get alms from the rich Spanish merchants there. Thus 
by losing two months, he would have the rest of the year 
free for study. After praying over it, he took this ad- 
vice, went twice to Flanders and once to England where 
he found most generous alms. 

It must have been after the first of these trips that the 
Spaniard who had stolen his money started for Spain 
and while waiting for a passage fell ill at Rouen. ‘And 
being thus ill the pilgrim learned it from a letter of his 
and had the desire to go to see him and take care of him, 
thinking that under such circumstances he could win him 
to leave worldliness and devote himself entirely to the 
service of God. And to be able to carry out this inten- 
tion there came to him the desire to travel the twenty- 
eight leagues between Paris and Rouen on foot, without 
shoes and without eating or drinking and, vraying cver 


SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS 81 


this desire, he found himself very fearful about it. Finally 
he went to the church of St. Dominic and there he made 
up his mind to go that way and he escaped from the great 
fear he had of tempting God. The morning of the next 
day when he ought to start, he got up early and when 
he commenced to get dressed there fell upon him such a 
fear that it almost seemed to him he could not get dressed. 
Nevertheless in spite of that shrinking he went out of 
the house and of the city before it was fully light. But 
the fear lasted and remained with him as far as Argen- 
teuil, which is a castle two leagues from Paris on the 
road to Rouen, where they say is the garment of Our 
Lord. While he was passing the castle, in much travail 
of his soul, while he was going up a hill, something began 
to change within him and there came to him a great con- 
solation and spiritual force with so great a feeling of hap- 
piness that he commenced to cry aloud and to talk with 
God, etc. And he passed that night with a poor beggar 
in a hospice having walked that day fourteen leagues. 
The next day he slept in the house of a merchant of straw; 
the third day he arrived at Rouen: all that time without 
eating or drinking and barefoot as he had resolved. In 
Rouen he consoled the sick man and helped to get him 
on a ship to go to Spain and gave him letters recom- 
mending him to the comrades who were in Salamanca, 
that is to say, Calixto, and Caceres and Arteaga.” 

When he came back from this trip, he found himself 
in trouble because of three Spaniards whom he was train- 
ing for companions of his work. Their new zeal sug- 
gested to them the need of doing something extraordinary 
to mark their readiness for the service of God, so after 
Ignatius had started for Rouen, they sold their books 
with all they had, left their colleges for the poorhouse 
where Ignatius used to dwell, and began to beg their 
bread. This roused great excitement among the Spanish 

® Confessions, 84. 


82 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


students who finally went in arms to the poorhouse, 
dragged the three mendicants out and would not release 
them except under promise to resume their studies and 
their ordinary life. Loyola was denounced to the in- 
quisitors of the faith. When he heard of this, he did not 
wait to be summoned, but went at once to the Inquisitor, 
who dismissed him without any blame. 

It may be conjectured that the three Spaniards gave 
up begging their food and returned to their ordinary way 
of living, at least with the consent, more probably with 
the advice, of Ignatius. He continued, indeed, to regard 
begging as sometimes a necessary adjunct to evangelic 
poverty, willing to distribute all its own goods to the 
poor and trust that God would always give us this day our 
daily bread, or a useful discipline for pride, or a proof 
to the soul and the souls of neighbours of a genuine hu- 
mility.° To the end of his life he called it “holy men- 
dicity.” It is therefore evident that his discouragement, 
and final practical prohibition, for the students under his 
care of that mendicity he had practiced in his early days 
at Paris, was not based on moral grounds, for he thought 
begging might be good for the soul of him who did it in 
the name of God. 

Neither was it based on social grounds. He was later 
the author of a law to prevent the abuse of begging in 
his native town, but there is nothing in what he wrote 
or said to suggest that he came to think that begging 
by students was an imposition on the public. It was an 
old custom in many European countries for poor students 
to beg. Some forty-five years after this time it was prev- 
alent enough to cause an English Parliament in its ‘“Acte 
for the Punishment of Vagabondes and for the Relief of 
the Poore and Impotent,” to provide for the punishment 
of all scholars of the Universities of Oxford and Cam- 


bridge “that go about begging, not being authorized under 
*Letts. IV, 494, 565. 


SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS 83 


the seal of the said Universities by the Commissary, Chan- 
cellor or vice-Chancellor of the same.”’ Ignatius came 
to abandon the common practice and finally practically 
to prohibit it for all students under his care, entirely for 
practical reasons drawn from his own experience. 

These reasons are clearly explained in a letter written 
by his orders twenty years after this time to Father Araoz 
about founding new colleges. ‘It seems to Father Igna- 
tius, generally speaking, that no students of the Company 
ought anywheres to beg their bread, because, just as in 
those who devote themselves to helping souls mendicity 
is all right, so it seems to him that in students, who ought 
to be devoted to themselves, it is not very edifying and 
in addition it does not help their studies for them to be 
distracted either by the need of the necessaries of life or 
the need of begging for them. And it seems to him that 
if, before a college is opened, provision is made of an in- 
come sufficient for a certain number of students, it is 
better to take one or two less rather than more.’® 

During his first year at Paris, Loyola found other dis- 
tractions. ‘These were not the ordinary pleasures which 
keep students from studying. They were the pleasures 
of the soul. 

“Not long after came the feast of St. Remigius with 
the beginning of October, and he began to hear the course 
in arts under a master called Juan Pegna, and he joined 
the class with the intention of preserving those comrades 
who had already determined to serve the Lord but not for 
the present to try to gain others, in order that he might 
be better able to study. When he commenced to hear the 
lectures of the course, the same temptations began to come 
to him which came when he studied Latin grammar at 
Barcelona, and every time he began to listen to the lec- 
ture, he could not keep his attention fixed on it because 

"44 Eliz. .C 5-1572. * Letts. I, 623. Compare Pol. III 78, e. g. 


84 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


of the many spiritual thoughts which came into his mind. 
And seeing that he made little progress in letters, he went 
to his master and made him the promise never to fail to 
attend the course as long as he was able to find bread and 
water to sustain life. And when he had made that prom- 
ise, all those devotional impulses which came to him so 
inopportunely left him and he went on quietly making 
progress with his studies. At this time he had converse 
with Mtro. Pierre Lefevre and Mtro. Alfonso Salmeron, 
whom he won to the service of God by means of the 
Spiritual Exercises. In addition he made an agreement 
with his roommate not to talk in study hours about 
spiritual things.’’® 

He succeeded in so arranging his money affairs that they 
made him little trouble. The Spanish merchants in the 
Netherlands and England sent him their alms and his old 
friends in Barcelona continued to help him. He writes 
to thank Isabel Roser for three letters and twenty 
ducats and hopes that God will put them to her account 
on the day of judgment and “pay them for him in very 
good money.” Another letter delicately suggests to Agnes 
Pascual that he needs more help. He wrote that “some 
of the sisters in Christ” have “excused themselves” for 
not being able to send more at present and asks advice 
about writing to others for help, adding, “I should prefer 
to decide this by your judgment rather than by my own.” 

So far as the Flemish and English alms were concerned, 
he became a sort of student relief agent for rich mer- 
chants who liked that form of good works and trusted 
him. In organizing this small business Ignatius showed 
the beginnings of his later marked executive ability. No 
money passed through his hands. Wherever he was or 
had been, the gifts were paid to some well known person 
who gave or sent him a bill of exchange on Paris. He 
gave that letter to a banker to cash and when he found a 

*Confessions, 85. Compare Ribad. de Actis. Scripta I, 385. 


SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS 85 


poor student needing help he drew a draft on the banker, 
so that his accounts kept themselves and were always in 
order.” 

In spite of all his diligence, Ignatius did not become 
a man of great learning, nor did he learn to write with 
facility and eloquence. This was recognized by his most 
intimate followers.” He said once “he believed no one had 
ever studied in spite of such great difficulties and obstacles 
as he. He named: (1) poverty; (2) great ill-health; 
(3) because he had no hope of gaining power or rising, 
nor any of the human impulses which are a solace in 
effort; (4) because he was not drawn to study by any 
liking but rather found it a very uphill effort. He studied 
twelve years only because he thought it would fit him for 
God’s service.”*” This was a reminiscence of the long 
effort of will it cost the soldier beginning at the age of 
thirty-three to fight his way from the declensions of the 
Latin grammar to the degree of Master of Arts of the 
University of Paris. 

If Loyola would not permit the pleasure of religious © 
thought to interfere with his studies; neither, on the other 
hand, would he let academic rules interfere with religious 
duties. Soon after he changed from the College of Mon- 
taigu to the College of Sainte Barbe, probably in the sum- 
mer of 1529, this faithfulness to religious duties brought 
him into trouble with the principal, Dr. Gouvea, who, 
it was reported to Loyola, had before threatened him with 
condign punishment if he caught him in Sainte Barbe 
because of the affair of the three Spaniards already re- 
lated.** The Doctor had probably forgotten about this, 
or at least his wrath had cooled, when Loyola entered 
the College of Sainte Barbe. But he was soon to be 
brought again into a whipping mood towards this trouble- 


* Araoz, Scripta I, 735. Pol. 49. ™ Lainez, Scripta, I, 394. 
“Pol. quoted Ribad. Scripta I, 394. - Confessions p. 83. 


86 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


some Spanish student. We do not get the story from 
Loyola himself, but from his earliest biographer, Ribad- 
eneira. He says: “I heard this in Paris in 1542,” that is, 
about ten or twelve years after it happened, and it is prob- 
able that he wrote down his report of what he heard in 
1542, about another ten years after he heard it. 

It was the custom in Sainte Barbe for the students in 
arts to hold disputations on the feast days of the church. 
Loyola began to counsel students to go to confession 
and communion on feast days and, employing these days 
in devotions, they ceased to go to the disputations. The 
master of Ignatius told him not to divert students from 
their academic exercises. He explained what he was 
advising but paid no attention to the words of the master 
and the number of those who went to the holy sacra- 
ment instead of the disputations, increased. ‘The master 
complained to the principal, who sent a warning to Loyola 
to stop. Loyola went on and, after three or four warn- 
ings the principal one day ordered the gates to be closed 
and the bell rung for assembly in the great Hall. All 
the masters being assembled there with bundles of rods, 
Loyola heard that it was certain the assembly was for 
the purpose of giving him a whipping. For this was done 
at Paris even to adult scholars. It was called giving a 
man “A hall.” Loyola went to the room of Dr. Gouvea, 
who had not yet come down. “He explained what he 
had done and said he was ready to be whipped for it, 
but pointed out that it would be a great scandal for the 
small boys if he were publicly whipped. In short, our 
Father talked in such a way that finally Dr. Gouvea led 
him by the hand into the great hall where all the masters 
were armed with rods and especially the master of Igna- 
tius. All the students were gaping to see the end of the 
spectacle which was that, before all that assembly, Doctor 

™“ Boehmer 324. 


SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS 87 


Gouvea kneeled down and with tears begged pardon of 
our Father for what he had intended to do, saying to all 
that he was a St. Jerome, etc. And so Our Lord brought 
greater good out of what the devil had arranged to break 
up the good work already begun, because from then on 
others commenced to follow the first in paying attention 
to the counsels and Spiritual Exercises of Our Father.”*® 

The end of this story is highly improbable, and sounds 
like “college gossip.” ** If a Parisian college of the be- 
ginning of the sixteenth century was anything like as 
gossiping a place as an American campus at the begin- 
ning of the twentieth century, ten or twelve years was 
quite long enough to form a plain story into a pious legend. 
(7) Surely Ignatius himself would have deprecated such 
an outcome. For if, in talking to the principal, he justly 
and persuasively insisted that it would be an injury for 
the little boys if a man of his age were publicly whipped 
for advising students to go to church, he would have 
judged it far worse for the small boys to see their prin- 
cipal kneeling in tears at his feet to ask pardon. 

But underlying this story, whose dramatic, edifying 
and improbable end so naturally excites suspicion, there 
was a solid fact: the memory of the persuasiveness of 
Ignatius in handling men, and his forgetfulness of self in 
the care of souls. 

Later Ignatius said that “as the devil showed great 
_ skill in tempting men into perdition, equal skill ought to 
be shown in saving them. The devil studied the nature 
of each man, seized upon the traits of his soul, adjusted 
himself to them and insinuated himself gradually into 
the victim’s confidence, suggesting splendours to the am- 
bitious, gain to the covetous, delight to the sensuous and 
a false appearance of piety to the pious, and a master in 
saving souls ought to act in the same cautious and skilful 

% Scripta, 383. Ribad. de Actis, 7® Boehmer, 136. 


88 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


way.”’ The memory of his tact, already remarkable, 
and afterwards developed to so high a pitch, found ex- 
pression in two other stories of his life at Paris which 
are not alluded to by his three modern biographers; 
though they are less highly improbable than Dr. Gouvea’s 
repentance and have the same degree of authentication. 
Ignatius knew a man who was involved in an illicit 
love affair from which he could not be withdrawn by 
any argument. The woman lived in the suburbs and the 
road to her house passed over a bridge. Ignatius way- 
laid the lover and “plunged himself into the freezing cold 
water up to his neck. Then he called out as his man was 
passing over the bridge ‘Go on, wretched one, go on to 
your disgusting pleasures. Do you not see ruin hang- 
ing over your head? Are you not horrified by the curse 
which is close upon you? Here will I afflict myself for 
you until the just anger of God appears to be turned 
aside.’ The man was very much alarmed and struck by 
so extreme a proof of charity. He stopped, turned back 
and immediately broke off his wicked relation.”** 
“There was a certain distinguished doctor of philosophy 
at Paris whom Ignatius desired to win for Christ. After 
he had tried many things in vain, he went to see him one 
day accompanied by a friend from whom we have this 
story. He found the Doctor taking a little honest recrea- 
tion in a certain game. That was a game of balls thrown 
upon a table according to certain rules and the Doctor . 
said, ‘Ignatius, you have come in the nick of time to play 
with me.’ Ignatius said he had no practise in the game 
and no skill at it. But the Doctor insisted that he should 
play with him. When he practically forced him to play, 
Ignatius said, ‘I will play with you but not for fun and 
for this stake: if I am beaten, I will do something for 
your sake; if I win, you will do something for me.’ The 
 Ribad. Ist Life fol. 204.  ™ Ribad. Ist Life fol. 174. 


SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS 89 


other accepted the bet and it was agreed between them 
that the loser should obey the honest commands of the 
winner. Ignatius, new at the game, without any practise 
(because he had never had the balls in his hand) beat 
the Doctor head over heels so that the friend said, 
‘Domine Doctor, this is the hand of God.’ He was beaten 
and gave his hand on it that he would do all that Ignatius 
said. Ignatius bade him give thirty days to meditation 
and, all other cares being put aside, to apply himself 
heartily to the Spiritual Exercises, which he did with a 
great reform of his life and to the wonder of men.” * 

Whatever may be the truth about these anecdotes there 
is unquestionable proof of his skill as a fisher of men in 
the band of six steadfast and faithful comrades he won to 
replace the six whom he had persuaded to share his ideals 
only to see them drift away from him. Three of them 
were, like Ignatius, younger sons of noble families. Most 
of them were poor. After Ignatius left Paris three more 
decided to join them. One of these men caused Ignatius 
later a great deal of trouble and was of a temperament 
which adjusted itself with difficulty to his.ideal. But 
the rest gave every sign of a deep and steadfast affection, 
undimmed by labours or hardships and willing to accept, 
without murmuring, any severity of discipline. Ignatius 
would himself gladly have admitted that the loyal aid 
of these friends was one of the chief means God gave him 
to carry on his work. 

The first to cast in his lot with Ignatius was Pierre 
Lefévre, the son of a pious Savoyard peasant farmer. 
When he became a roommate of Ignatius at the Col- 
lege of Sainte Barbe, he was drifting, dreaming vaguely 
of all sorts of futures from practising medicine to becom- 
ing a monk; troubled from time to time by the fear that 
he had not fully confessed his sins and beset by fierce 
temptations. Ignatius helped him four years, before he 

* Rib. 631. Not in 1st Life. 


90 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


would consent to give him the Spiritual Exercises. He 
was not distinguished for intellectual ability but for a 
certain beauty of character. He was as gentle as he was 
loyal and insisted that the worst heretics ought to be 
loved. He notes in his sketches of his own life that he 
prayed even for Henry VIII and Martin Luther.” 
Ignatius shortly before his death ordered masses to be 
said and prayers offered for Germany and England,” but 
this anxiety for the personal fate of men so plainly given 
over to the counsels of the devil, seems to have been 
peculiar to the gentle Lefevre. 

Another roommate of Ignatius was Francesco Javier 
(Xavier), youngest son of a Basque noble whose father 
had been president of the council of the French kings of 
Navarre. Faithfulness to the fallen dynasty had reduced 
the family almost to poverty. Young Xavier was an 
athlete, the best jumper in the university, able, ambitious, 
a lover of ease and pleasure; kept from debauchery only 
by a certain fine-fibred dislike for the grossness with 
which so many of his fellow students practised it. His 
strongest desire, apparently, was to get a fat canonry 
near home in the city of Pamplona. He shared the room 
of Lefévre and Loyola and for some time was rather in- 
clined to laugh at this elderly Spanish student of mediocre 
abilities and peculiar fanatical ideas about religion. 
The two were, however, kept more or less together by. 
their common liking for Lefévre and once when Xavier 
was telling both of them about the great ecclesiastical 
career he planned to make, Loyola suddenly asked him, 
“And what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul?” It was one of those sud- 
den unforgettable impressions which so often has brought 
about such complete changes in men.” Though Xavier 


* Memoriale, Fabri Monumenta. ™ Letts. V, 221, 229. VIII, 226. 2 See 
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. Begbie, Twice Born Men. 


SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS 91 


and Loyola were shortly afterward separated for life by 
oceans, they remained bound together in heart like David 
and Jonathan with a love “passing the love of women.”” 

Diego Lainez was perhaps the ablest intellectually of 
all the early fathers. His great grandfather had been a 
Jew, which in the eyes of many Spaniards left a mark 
of inferiority on all his descendants, even the most Chris- 
tian. Loyola as a soldier had evidently shared this preju- 
dice, but since his conversion he had escaped from it and 
finally chose Lainez to succeed him as general of the 
Company. They took to each other from the start, when 
Lainez, already a Master of Arts of Alcala, came up to 
Paris and Loyola gave him the Spiritual Exercises almost 
immediately. He was a man of an extremely ardent tem- 
perament, capable when heated in argument of attack- 
ing his opponents with the verbal ferocity Luther showed 
against the Papacy. When Lainez was attending the 
Council of Trent some fifteen years after he left Paris, 
he and Salmeron went to call on Melchior Cano, a cele- 
brated Spanish Dominican theologian who had expressed 
very unfavourable opinions of the Company of Jesus. The 
conversation lasted about two hours and grew steadily 
warmer. Lainez finally insinuated that Cano after all 
was nothing but a simple Dominican friar, and was set- 
ting himself up to be chief shepherd in the Church of 
God in place of the Pope. To which Cano replied with 
a sour sweet smile, ‘“‘Ah, Senor, then your wisdom does not 
think that the dogs ought to bark when the shepherds 
are asleep?” “Yes,” said Lainez, ‘“They ought to bark but 
at the wolves, not at other dogs.”” Cano went further and 
charged the Company with “novelties in religion.” This 
so stirred up “the good father Lainez” that he dropped 
into vernacular Spanish and said—the word Victor Hugo 
glorifies so rhetorically in Les Miserables as Cambronnes’ 
answer to the demand for surrender at Waterloo. But 

*°TI Samuel I, 26. 


92 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Lainez, who had rushed from the room with this last shot 
at his distinguished opponent “had not gone out of the 
house before he repented of that liberty of his tongue. So 
coming back he knelt at Cano’s feet and begged pardon.” 
When Lainez had succeeded Ignatius as general, he went 
to France with the papal legate, visited the conference 
with the Huguenot theologians held at Poissy in 1560 and 
“spoke with vehemence.” He addressed to the Queen 
Mother (Catherine de Médicis) reproaches which brought 
tears to her eyes and threatened her with the ruin of the 
kingdom if she did not drive from it “these evil minded 
people, these adversaries of the faith and of religion, these 
wolves, foxes, serpents, assassins.”*? (8) Lainez was 
manifestly of a strong and excitable temperament. But 
Ignatius was aware that some of the best horses are ex- 
tremely hard to break. He knew how to handle this fiery 
descendant of Spanish Jews who had become a Christian. 
The temperament of Lainez bowed completely in rever- 
ence and affection to the person and ideals of Loyola.” 

Alfonso Salmeron was a friend of Lainez, of marked 
ability, well trained in Latin and the new study of Greek. 

Nicolas Alfonso surnamed from his birthplace Boba- 
dilla, came to Paris in order to study Latin, Greek and He- 
brew: the three languages whose study marked a man as 
an adherent of the methods of the New Learning. At first 
he gave some anxiety to his comrades and superiors by a 
probably unconscious impulse to put himself forward. He 
had at one time a tendency to express his opinion on 
important matters which were not his business. He 
talked too much, often interrupting other people. He 
had a very regrettable habit of expressing his opinions 
on matters of state, even writing ill-advised letters to 
princes and cardinals. He became at times extremely 
excited in disputation—so much so on one occasion that 


** Nadal II, 45. ™Bouillé II, p. 159, cited mss. de l’Abbaye St. Germain. 
** See his extraordinary letter quoted later. 


SEVEN YEARS AT PARIS 93 


bystanders thought he had drunk too much.” He toned 
down, however, and became a useful member of the order. 

Simon Rodriguez was a noble Portuguese who came 
to Paris on one of the scholarships maintained there by 
the King of Portugal. He seems the one marked mis- 
take of Loyola in picking men. His unwise and head- 
strong and disloyal conduct, which will be discussed later, 
certainly did very great harm for a time to the Company 
in Portugal. Ignatius, against the advice of the court of 
his peers which tried Rodriguez, treated him with an 
indulgence unusual and rather puzzling, and it seems to an 
outsider that some historians of the Company have been 
inclined to follow Loyola’s example. 

Of the three comrades gained after Ignatius left Paris 
not much need be said. Codure died five years later. He 
was tenderly remembered by his comrades. Claude Jay 
served faithfully as preacher and professor of theology 
of the University of Ingolstadt. Broet was a faithful 
servant of the Company for twenty-seven years, as 
preacher, as nuncio to Scotland, as rector of the College 
at Bologna, as provincial of Italy, and, for the last ten 
years of his life, in the difficult office of provincial of his 
native country, France. 

These ten men, whose age ranged from the early 
twenties to the early forties, five Spaniards and one Por- 
tuguese, two Savoyards and two Frenchmen, were filled 
with newly won joy and zeal for religion which they all 
wished to express in the same way. However much it 
may have seemed to any one of them that he had spon- 
taneously and separately chosen this way of service for 
himself, it was undoubtedly, psychologically speaking, im- 
posed upon their hearts and wills by the persuasion and 
the dominant personality of Ignatius. Otherwise it would 
have been either less unanimous or less vague. The first 
seven of them determined to have some sort of a religious 


77 Salmeron, I 20. 


94 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


ceremony to express their common expectation: for it 
could hardly be called a plan. In the month of August, 
1534, when the university was in vacation, Ignatius and 
his six comrades went outside the gates on the slopes of 
Montmartre where, about six hundred yards from the 
summit, stood a little church called Notre Dame de Mont- 
martre. It was not used for public worship and doubtless 
was not in the best repair. This remote and venerable 
little building was controlled by the abbess of the neigh- 
bouring convent of the sisters of St. Benedict, who gave 
permission to the pious students to use it and they got 
the keys from the woman who kept them. 

They kneeled around the altar while Lefevre, the only 
priest amongst them, said mass. Then, each in turn, they 
took oath and communed. The exact words of the vow 
have not been preserved, but they promised before God 
to go to Jerusalem, giving up their family and all worldly 
goods except fare for the journey, in order to devote them- 
selves at the holy city to helping their neighbours. If, 
however, war with the Turks stopped shipping for a year, 
or if they were sent back by the guardian of the holy 
sepulchre (as Ignatius had been) they would go to Rome 
to ask the Vicar of Christ when and how they could best 
serve the souls of their neighbours. (9) 

When the simple ceremony was finished the little group 
of friends crossed over the hill to eat their frugal meal 
together by the fountain of St. Denis and to spend the 
rest of the day in converse about the things of the soul. 


CHAPTER VII 
THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS: WORKING AND WAITING 


This vow was taken for the first time in August, 1534, 
and repeated on the same date in 1535 and 1536. But 
Ignatius was not with his friends on the last two anni- 
versaries. He had passed his examinations as a licentiate 
and a master of arts and made progress in the special 
study of theology; but he was unable to finish his course. 
At the beginning of the year 1535 he became very ill and 
suffered agonies whose seat seemed to be in his stomach. 
These pains returned intermittently during the rest of 
his life and it was not until near the end that the doctors 
discovered that the cause of the trouble was gallstones.’ 
Naturally they were unable to help him and finally as a 
last resort ordered him to try to return to his native air: 
a remedy much in fashion with puzzled doctors of the 
time. “His comrades also gave him the same advice and 
urged him strongly to follow it. . . . At last the pilgrim 
let, himself be persuaded by the comrades because in addi- 
tion to other reasons those who were Spaniards had ar- 
rangements to make at home in which he could be useful. 
And the agreement was that when he was better he should 
go to attend to their affairs and then travel to Venice 
where he should await their arrival. . . . So he mounted 
a little horse the comrades had bought for him and started 
off home alone.” * His health became very much better 
during the journey. Just before he started Loyola heard 
that he had been charged with heresy for the fourth time 


"Por Vi, 35. * Confessions 88. 
95 


96 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


during his student days. The moment was a very dan- 
gerous one for a charge of heresy. Four or five months 
before some heretics had made a rash move which had 
aroused an excited desire for vengeance among the people 
and shaken Francis I out of a half-tolerant attitude; partly 
a liking for the New Learning and partly a shrewd 
sense of the political advantage of being on good terms 
with the German Protestant princes. In October, 1534, 
the walls of Paris were covered in the night with placards 
attacking the sacrament of the mass, and denouncing “‘the 
Pope and all his vermin of cardinals, bishops, priests and 
monks and all others who say mass and consent to it” as 
“false prophets, damnable deceivers, apostates, wolves, 
false shepherds, idolaters, seducers, liars and execrable 
blasphemers, murderers of souls, renouncers of Jesus 
Christ, false witnesses, traitors, thieves, insulters of God’s 
honour and more detestable than devils.” The King, on 
whose bedroom door in the Chateau of Amboise a copy 
of this document was posted by one of his choir (after- 
wards burnt for it), ordered the courts to leave no stone 
unturned to punish the insult to God and to him. A great — 
expiatory ceremony was ordered and a huge crowd 
watched the procession as it passed from the Church of 
St. Germain l’Auxerrois to the cathedral of Notre Dame. 
The four princes of the blood royal carried the canopy over 
the host which was borne by the Bishop of Paris. Behind 
it, alone, his head bare and a candle in his hand, walked 
the King. After mass all the dignitaries went to dine 
with the bishop and after dinner the King called into the 
great hall the bishop and clergy, the rector of the Univer- 
sity and the leading professors, the city magistrates, and 
chief merchants, and, sitting in his chair, surrounded by 
the princes, cardinals, his counsellors and all the am- 
bassadors, made a solemn speech, which ended by the 
declaration that “if his arm were infected with heresy 
he would cut it off.”” The day’s solemnities were finished 


THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS 97 


by burning six heretics; three near the beginning and 
three near the end of the line of march of the procession. 
“Many other heretics were burnt in great number on 
different days following, so that in Paris one saw nothing 
but stakes set up in different places; which frightened the 
people of Paris very much.’’® 

It was not strange that, in such an atmosphere of ex- 
citement, where everyone might be inclined to suspect his 
neighbour of secret heresy, Loyola and his little band of 
Ifiguistas should arouse suspicion. We have a record of 
this more personal than an anonymous denunciation be- 
fore an inquisitor. Nadal was a student at Paris, who 
some ten years later joined the Company of Jesus, but 
now he met all Loyola’s advances with a suspicious eye. 
They had the same confessor, who urged Nadal to talk 
with Ignatius. “Since you are not an Igniguista yourself,” 
Nadal replied, ““‘why do you want me to become one?” 
When visits from the comrades, three of whom Nadal had 
known at Alcala, failed, Ignatius tried himself. He had 
written a long letter to a nephew to persuade him to leave 
the world and begin a more perfect life. He read this to 
Nadal in a little church where they both went to say 
their prayers. “Then,” writes Nadal, “the devil recog- 
nized the power of Ignatius and turned me aside from 
the spirit which was drawing me towards good. I said to 
him: ‘I wish to follow this book (I had the New Testa- 
ment in my hand). Don’t talk to me any more of these 
things.’ What I was saying to myself was, ‘I do not want 
to join these people. Who knows whether they will not 
fall into the hands of the inquisitors?’ After that I did 
not see again at Paris either Ignatius or any of his 
friends.’’* 

It was the habit of Ignatius always to meet boldly this 
danger of charges of heresy which beset his whole early 

* Guiffrey, 125, 129. “Nadal, Vol. I, p. 1-3. 


98 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


life. Without waiting for a summons, he went at once to 
the inquisitor, said he had heard of an accusation, that 
he must go at once to Spain and would like an immediate 
sentence. The inquisitor said the accusation was not im- 
portant enough to need any trial but he would like to see 
the manuscript of the “Spiritual Exercises.” Ignatius gave 
it to him and pressed for a trial. When he could not 
induce the inquisitor to hold one, he brought a notary to 
make a legal record that the accusation had been dis- 
missed without trial.° 

Ignatius, when he left Paris, steered straight for home, 
which he had not seen during fourteen years. We have 
only five of his letters previous to his departure from 
Paris. Three of them are to Agnes Pascual, another to 
Isabel Roser. ‘These were two of his wealthy friends 
at Barcelona. The fifth letter was written, two years 
before Ignatius left Paris, to his brother Martin Garcia, 
the Lord of Onaz and Loyola. It is in answer to a letter 
asking about the advisability of sending a nephew of 
Ignatius’ to study in Paris. Ignatius approves, but ad- 
vises that he should study theology rather than canon 
law because theology is better adapted to gaining “the 
riches which do not pass away and to give rest in old age. 
. . . For his expenses, tuition fees and other necessities, 
I believe fifty ducats a year will suffice. I think that in 
a strange land with a cold climate, you should not wish 
your son to lack any of the necessaries of life because, 
in my judgment, this impedes study.” He promises, if 
the lad comes, to do what his father wants him to do— 
guard him against evil associations and extravagance. 

“You say you are very glad to see reason to think I 
have given up my habit of never writing to you.” To 
this brotherly sentiment Ignatius makes a long reply filled 
with Latin phrases and quotations from St. Paul. The 
substance is that for the first years after leaving home 


® Confessions 88. 


THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS 99 


it was not for his good to write; that for the last five 
or six years he would have written oftener but for two 
reasons, first, his studies and many conversations—but not 
about temporal things; second, because it did not seem 
probable that his letters would do service to God or in- 
crease His praise. He adds, no one loves God with the 
whole heart who loves anything for itself and not be- 
cause of God. He hopes that his family will show love 
and zeal in the service and praise of God that he may love 
and serve them more and exhorts his brother to think less 
of the world and more of God; “setting a good example 
and teaching holy doctrine to his children, servants and 
relatives, ruling his household without anger and doing 
much for poor orphans and those in need.’’® 

The long journey was entirely uneventful until Ignatius 
got on the border of Guiptizcoa and near home. ‘He 
turned aside from the high road and was following a soli- 
tary road among the hills which led through a region noted 
for murders. He had not gone far when he saw two 
armed men coming towards him who passed him and then 
turned around to come galloping after him. He had a 
touch of fear, but speaking to them, found they were ser- 
vitors of his brother who had heard from Bayonne, where 
the pilgrim was known, that he was on the road and had 
sent these men to escort him through the dangerous re- 
gion. When he got almost to the city he was met by the 
priests come out to escort him to his brother’s house. He 
refused to go there and resisted the pressing efforts by 
which they almost tried to force him to go. So he went 
to the house of refuge for the poor and when the fitting 
hour came went out to beg his bread. And in the hos- 
pital he commenced talking of the things of God with 
many who came to see him, and by God’s grace he did 
some good. He determined to teach Christian doctrine 
every day to children. His brother opposed this very 


pletis..1,.77. 


100 IGNATIUS LOYOLA | 


much and said that no one would come to hear him. The 
pilgrim replied that one would be enough. But as soon 
as he began to do it, many came regularly—his brother 
among them. Beside this he preached every Sunday with 
profit to souls; so that they came from many miles to hear 
hints 

He was not content with preaching and teaching. He 
tells us how he brought about certain reforms through the 
government of the little city. By his influence with the 
officers of the courts, gambling was effectively prohibited. 
He also arranged an ordinance that the church bells 
should ring for Ave Maria three times a day, “in order 
that all the people might pray as is done in Rome.” The 
most striking thing he did during his three months’ stay 
in his birthplace, was to introduce a poor law based on 
the best recent models as he had seen them at work in 
the Netherlands. No reform was more obvious; for beg- 
ging was admitted to be one of the curses of Spain, and 
the Cortez of the previous year had asked Charles V 
to take some means to repress it. One of Ignatius’ patrons 
in the Netherlands had been a Spaniard, Louis Vives, a 
man of international reputation as a scholar, who had 
written a celebrated pamphlet, translated into three lan- 
guages, on the care of the poor. Ignatius had probably 
seen this plan in actual operation at Ypres and other cities 
of the Netherlands. At all events, the main ideas of ‘The 
Ordinance for the Care of the Poor in Azpeitia” are very 
like those of the plan of Vives. Ignatius did not invent 
anything in this matter of poor laws. He only took ideas 
which were in the air and applied them for the first time 
to a Spanish city. 

These ideas were entirely opposed to the whole 
medizval and monastic practice in regard to almsgiving. 
They were opposed to the whole earlier practice of 
Ignatius as he described it: e.g., his giving away all his 


” Confessions, 89. 


THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS 101 


money to a swarm of beggars at Ferrara when he was on 
his way back from Jerusalem eleven years before.* This _ 
is only one of many instances in which this extreme con- 
servative in the realm of thought showed himself, in the 
realm of action, a friend of new ideas and skilful in adapt- 
ing them to the needs of a given situation. 

The new regulation appointed officers called major- 
domos of the poor, who, on Sundays and festivals, were to 
make regular collections and justly distribute the money 
to the poor, native or strangers. Other collections by 
agents of charitable or religious institutions (with two 
named exceptions) were forbidden under pain of prison: 
those who gave to them were punished by fine. Ordinary 
begging, or giving alms to beggars, was forbidden under 
pain of prison; persistent begging by sturdy beggars was 
punished by a whipping.” Shortly after he suggested this 
law, Ignatius tells us, he begged at Bologna. The incon- 
sistency of his subsequent practice with the principles of 
this Ordinance for the Care of the Poor, is not explained 
by him. Probably he would have said that, where no good 
laws existed, he who was poor for Christ’s sake must do 
the best he could under the old system. Begging from 
door to door became on the whole less and less prominent 
in the practice of the Company of Jesus as time went on; 
though it was never formally abandoned in the lifetime 
of Ignatius. 

“When Ignatius’ health was restored he made up his 
mind to leave and do the errands confided to him by his 
comrades and go without a cent. His brother was very 
much put out at this, and felt bitterly ashamed of having 
a member of the family go on foot.”” Finally the pilgrim 
yielded so far as to agree to ride to the boundary of the 
province of Guiptizcoa in company with his brother and 
his relatives. At the border he dismounted and continued 


*See page 54. *Scripta, 536 ff. *° This was very undignified for a Spanish 
cavalier. 


102 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


on foot after refusing to accept any money.” He then 
visited the families of his four Spanish comrades, “always 
refusing to accept from them any money though it was 
most pressingly urged upon him. At Valencia he had a 
talk with Castro," who had become a monk.” ” 

From Valencia he sailed to Genoa and there took the 
road for Bologna. In the mountains he lost his way and 
following a footpath which led him high up on the rocks 
along a torrent, the path grew narrower and narrower 
until finally he felt he could go neither forward nor back- 
ward. Finally he went on his hands and knees and made 
a very long distance this way, “‘in great terror because he 
feared he would fall into the river at every moment and 
that was the greatest fatigue and bodily effort he ever 
went through.”* 

At Bologna he begged but did not get a penny. Some- 
body must have been charitable, however, for he was ill 
in bed with fever, chills and pain for seven days;** prob- 
ably in the hospital. Then he walked to Venice begging 
his way, and arrived in “the last days of December, 1535. 
He immediately set himself to the study of theology; 
expecting to finish in about fifteen months his studies in- 
terrupted at Paris. His living was taken care of by his 
his friends in Barcelona; especially Isabel Roser, who 
sent him twelve escudos and offered to send him more.” 
Jacob Cazador also sent him money and promised more. 
We have seen that Ignatius when he was a pilgrim on 
the road would not take money even from his brother or 
the families of his friends. He thought that was to doubt 
the care of God. But this money he did not scruple to 
take gratefully because he had learned by experience 
that a student could not beg his living and study well. 

Loyola spent eighteen months in Venice but he de- 


™ One of his first comrades at Paris. ™ Confessions, 90. 
™ Confessions, 91. “Letts. I, 94. * Letts. I, 93. 


THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS 103 


votes to his stay there only a few lines of his Confes- 
sions. He became acquainted with a number of influen- 
tial and important people and it was perhaps during this 
Venetian stay that he completely got out of his early 
habit of a rustic, almost a rude, simplicity of address to 
which (like the early Quakers) he had once felt himself 
impelled by conscience.*® At least, if we can judge by 
a letter he addressed to “The Magnificent Lord Pietro 
Contarini, my most dear friend in Christ,” he had now or 
before given this up. This was one of the many instances 
where Ignatius learned by experience what was useful to 
his great purpose of helping souls. As time went on he 
evidently became conscientiously careful to give every 
one his due of outward respect. Five years before his 
death, when he sent a deputation to Florence to open a 
college, their carefully written instructions told them to 
kiss the hand of the Duke and kneel and kiss the hand 
of the Duchess and not to cover their heads unless ordered 
to do so." 

Of these friends he made in Venice by “spiritual con- 
versations” many remained his steadfast well-wishers. 
Some took the Spiritual Exercises, and became closely 
bound to him in spiritual friendship. We have nine letters 
of Ignatius dated at Venice; extracts from two of them 
written to an old Barcelona friend, Theresa Rejadella, 
give us an idea of these spiritual conversations. 

He tells her that “the enemy (the devil) is weakening 
her usefulness and disturbing the peace of her soul in 
two ways. The first is by persuading her to a false humil- 
ity; the second by persuading her to a great fear of God. 
. . . Your own words prove this wile of the devil has suc- 
ceeded with you, for you write that you are a poor re- 
ligious person who wishes ‘as it seems to me’ to serve God, 
and you do not dare to say, ‘I want to serve God’... . 

16 Confessions, 67. 7 Letts. III, 719. 


104 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


You see how the martyrs brought before idolatrous judges, 
said they were servants of Christ. So you, facing the 
enemy of all mankind . . . ought to confess that you are 
Christ’s servant and that you would rather die than leave 
His service. . . . When the devil suggests to me justice, 
I think of mercy. If he brings up mercy, I, on the con- 
trary, say justice. So it is necessary for us to proceed 
in order not to be disturbed in heart and to leave the 
tricksters tricked.” Ignatius describes two lessons of 
God: ‘He gives one and permits the other. The one 
He gives, is inward consolation, which casts out all per- 
turbation and draws us to a complete love of God. To 
some in this state, He shows a great light, to others He 
discloses many secret things. . . . Finally, with that 
divine consolation, all difficulties become pleasures and 
all fatigue rest. He who walks with that glow, warmth 
and comfort in his heart, cannot bear any burden which 
does not seem to him light. Nor is any penance, nor any 
toil so great that it does not seem very sweet.” The 
second lesson (which God permits) is when “our ancient 
enemy fills us with sadness and we do not know why we 
are sad and we can neither pray with any devotion, nor 
even talk, nor hear about God Our Lord with any zest 
or savour in the heart. And not only that ... but He 
fills our mind with the thought that we are forgotten of 
God and separated from our Lord.” Ignatius goes on to 
say we must resist our enemy and wait patiently for the 
consolation God will surely send us. 

In another letter he warns Theresa not to let the re- 
ligious pleasures of prayer and meditation make her for- 
get to take necessary food and natural sleep. . . . “Above 
all think that God loves you—which I do not doubt— 
and respond with love to Him; paying no attention to 
evil thoughts or cowardly impulses when they are against 
your will. . . . For just as I do not hope to be saved by 


THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS 105 


the good works of the good angels, so I do not expect 
to be lost because of the evil and weak thoughts which 
bad angels, the world and the flesh, suggest to my mind 
against my will.’”’*® 

This letter makes evident a stage in that slow change 
of attitude towards ascetic austerities in which the new 
soldier of Christ had once hoped to rival the lives of the 
saints." He had now come to be afraid lest, in some 
cases at least, they might interfere with God’s service. 
Three years later, he put into the first sketch of the 
Constitutions of the Company of Jesus the prohibition 
against imposing general ascetic practices by rule that 
was such a contrast with the law and custom of most of 
the older orders. He thought however that these ascetic 
practices might be useful to individual souls as a means 
of keeping the body under or expressing contrition for 
sin. 

While Ignatius was thus engaged in studying theology 
and helping souls in Venice, his comrades were doing the 
same thing in Paris. Lainez wrote a few years afterward, 
“We frequently ate together, bringing out food to the 
room now of one and then of another, which, together with 
frequent visits, enflamed our spirits and, I believe, added 
much to our steadfastness. God helped us in our studies 
and also in helping our neighbours. We had great love 
among us and we aided each other, even in natural things, 
so far as we could. That was the word Father Ignatius 
had left with us, with the good Master Lefevre as a sort 
of older brother to all of us.” 

It had been agreed when Ignatius left Paris, that his 
comrades should start to join him at the feast of the con- 
version of St. Paul (Jan. 25th) in 1537, that is to say, 
in about two years. As the year 1536 drew to its close, 
he began to be much worried about them. So he wrote 

* Letts, I, 107. * Confessions, 41, 45. 


106 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the following letter: “To my spiritual Father—The Con- 
fessor of the Queen of France: May the grace and love 
oi Christ Our Lord be always in our favour to help us. 

“Remembering the good will which for the love and 
service of God Our Lord you have shown me, without my 
being worthy of it, I have concluded to write this letter, 
not to repay you in any way, but to ask new kindness and 
gifts in the service and praise of His Divine Majesty. 
Magister Pedro Fabro with some companions intends to 
make a troublesome journey. I think, considering the dis- 
turbances and wars grown so great in Christendom because 
of our sins, that he and his company will find themselves 
in extreme necessity. For the service and reverence of 
God Our Lord, I beg you to be willing to turn your atten- 
tion to and favour them so far as God inclines you, and it 
may be possible for you to do it.””° 

When Ignatius wrote on their behalf, his comrades 
were already on their way to join him. In face of the 
renewed war between Francis I and Charles V, it seemed 
better to forestall the date agreed upon for leaving Paris, 
and they set out about the middle of October, taking a 
circuitous route through Germany and Switzerland. The 
little band of nine marched with their sacks on their backs 
carrying clothes and their precious books. On the road 
they sang psalms or repeated in chorus the prayers of the 
Church or talked of the things of God. One of the three 
priests among them said mass every day and the others 
confessed and communed. When they arrived at an inn, 
or left it, they kneeled down in prayer. It rained all the 
time they were walking in France and snowed all the 
time in Germany. In France they had a few disturbing 
hours with soldiers or magistrates who suspected them of 
being spies. In Germany, where they were for a long 
time in Protestant territory, they were once threatened 
with jail by an angry minister they had refused to allow 

Letts, I, 109. 


THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS 107 


to eat at the same table with them in the inn. But they 
met with no serious misadventure and arrived in Venice 
January 1537, safe and sound after their eight weeks’ 
tramp. Two of them who some years later wrote little 
accounts of the journey, seemed to look back on it with 
pleasure.” 

_Ignatius was full of joy at seeing them and filled with 
an innocent pride in so goodly and faithful a company of 
friends; as appears very plainly between the lines of the 
letter he wrote when Isabel Roser sent word that his old 
friend, Juan de Verdolay, would be glad to hear from 
him. 

“T expect to stay here about a year, a little more or 
less. I do not know after that what God Our Lord will 
ordain for me. There arrived here from Paris, about the 
middle of January, nine of my friends in the Lord, all 
masters of arts and well versed in theology, four of them 
Spaniards, two Frenchmen, two from Savoy and one from 
Portugal. They entered here into two hospitals to serve 
the sick poor in the humblest, most repugnant services. 
After they had gone through this exercise for two months, 
they went to Rome to keep holy week there and, as they 
were in poverty, without money and without favour of 
lettered persons, in short had nothing to back them, they 
put their trust and hope solely in God for whom they 
went. They found, and without any trouble, much more 
than they sought; that is to say, they talked with the 
Pope, and many cardinals, bishops and doctors of theology 
discussed with them. . . . The Pope and all who heard 
them were so content that they commenced to show them 
all possible favour. In the first place, the Pope gave 
them permission to go to Jerusalem and bestowed on them 
once or twice his benediction, exhorting them to per- 
severe in their intention. Secondly, he gave them sixty 


*! Rodriguez, Lainez. 


108 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


ducats in alms and from cardinals and other persons they 
received one hundred and fifty ducats more, so that they 
brought here in bills of exchange two hundred and sixty 
ducats. Thirdly, to those who were priests he gave power 
to hear confession and absolve in all cases of episcopal 
jurisdiction. Fourthly, to those who were not priests, he 
gave letters empowering any bishop to ordain them with- 
out benefice. So when they got back here to Venice, we 
took all the orders, including the priesthood, and we vol- 
untarily gave a vow of perpetual poverty into the hands 
of the Legate of the Pope who was here. .. . So far as 
the ordination was concerned, two bishops wanted to do it. 
Neither in Rome nor in Venice did we have to pay any 
fees. All was done gratuitously. The Legate also gave 
us complete authority to preach, interpret the scriptures 
and teach publicly and privately in all Venetian territory, 
together with power to confess and absolve all episcopal, 
archepiscopal and patriarchal cases. 

“T have explained all this not only to carry out what 
I said but also to show our great blameworthiness and 
confusion of face if we do not help ourselves after God 
has so much helped us; because without our knowledge 
nor asking, it seems that all the means to carry out our 
designs come to our hands. . . . Hence I beg you, for 
the service and reverence of His Divine Majesty, be in- 
stant in prayer for us, asking your devout friends to do 
the same; for you see how we need prayer, because he 
who has received much is indebted for more. 

“This year, in spite of our hope to go to Jerusalem, 
there has been no ship, nor will there be any because of 
the great fleet the Turk is forming. So we have agreed 
to send back to Rome the bills of exchange for two hun- 
dred and sixty ducats . . . because we do not want any 
one to think that we hunger and thirst for the things about 
which worldlings are now preparing to die. All of us are 


THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS 109 


going, divided up two by two, through Italy, until next 
year, when we will cross to Jerusalem if we can.” 

The same suspicions which had beset Ignatius in Alcala, 
Salamanca and Paris, attacked him in Venice. It was said 
that he was a fugitive from justice who had been burnt in 
effigy in Spain and France. These constantly recurring 
accusations of heresy brought against a future saint of the 
Church, are not so surprising as at first sight appears. One 
of the results of the tremendous breaking up of old 
ecclesiastical institutions which was rapidly going on, was 
to strengthen in many minds the tendency to regard every- 
thing strange as dangerous. In the case of people to whom 
religion is in effect little more than an inherited prejudice 
in favor of certain ideas and customs, this tendency breeds 
a zest in the pursuit of heresy which they find in no other 
expression of their belief. For it combines a sense of 
importance in being an assistant district attorney of God 
to prepare indictments for the last judgment, with the 
excitement of playing the amateur detective in uncovering 
mysterious evildoers. 

The outcome of the accusation at Venice suggests that 
it was probably brought by this sort of people. Loyola, 
according to his custom, did not wait to be summomed but 
boldly presented himself before the tribunal. Their sen- 
tence, given the 13th of October, 1537, says that after 
hearing Ignatius himself and considering all possible testi- 
mony, written and oral, given and insinuated to this court, 
they find the charges “frivolous, vain and false” and they 
impose silence on all who would repeat them. They 
declare that Father Ignatius “has been and is a priest of 
good and religious life and of holy doctrine, of the highest 
character and reputation, who up to now has taught doc- 
trine and given a good example in Venice. And thus we 
Say, pronounce, give judgment, absolve, and declare in 
every way we can and ought. Praise be to God.” * 

* Letts. I, 118. 8 Scripta, I, 624. 


110 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


The service of the comrades at Venice in the care of 
the sick poor which became a regular part of the good 
works done by all Jesuit missionaries, caused the erection 
later of a statue in a niche of the chapel of a cloister which 
bore this inscription. ‘“S. Franciscus Xaverius ulcera 
lambendo aegrotum sanavit.” “St. Francis Xavier cured 
a sick man by licking his ulcers.” * 

There is no doubt that Xavier did what the first part 
of this inscription said he did, for Lainez recorded it only 
ten years later in words even more realistic. He does not 
say whether the sick man recovered or not, but records it 
as an example of a “notable proof of charity and victory 
over self.” By it Xavier overcame, once and for all, his 
disgust and shrinking from people afflicted with loathsome 
and dangerous diseases. Ignatius records during his Paris 
life a somewhat similar victory over himself. A sick man > 
was in a house ill with what was suspected to be the pest. 
Ignatius went to comfort and help him. When he came 
out, his hand with which he had touched the sore of the 
patient “commenced to give him pain so that he thought 
he had the pest and that imagination was so strong that 
he could not conquer it, until, with a strong impulse, he 
thrust his hand into his mouth saying, ‘If you have got 
the pest in your hand you will have to have it in your 
mouth.’ And when he had done that the imagination 
left him and also the ache in his hand.” *° 

These two men had never heard of germs, but we must 
remember that what they did seemed just as dangerous 
to them as it does to us—and just as disgusting; for they 
were both Basque nobles, a class of people noted for clean- 
liness. As patriots in time of war steel themselves to face 
dirt, hardship and death through months or years for the 
sake of their country, so these men of delicate conscience 
and iron will were fixed on dying daily for all the years of 

“Venturi, II, p. 90, n. 2. 5 Scripta, I, p. 114. *° Confessions, 86. 


THE POOR PILGRIM PRIESTS 111 


their life in the great war between God and evil. No 
discipline seemed too hard if it fitted them for this service. 
They asked for no relief except from sin and any human 
shrinking which might weaken them for this duty. In 
their ideal of living there was no room for ordinary pleas- 
ures or natural disgusts. They were determined to strip 
their life absolutely bare of all motives except obedience 
to the Church, the wish to help the sins and sorrows of men, 
joy in God and the fellowship of those like minded with 
themselves. 


CHAPTER VIII 


A POWERFUL ENEMY. BEGGING AND FINANCE 
THE INQUISITION AGAIN 


Ignatius did not go to Rome with his nine comrades. 
He tells us why in a line of his Confessions, “The pilgrim 
did not go because of Dr. Ortiz and also because of the new 
Cardinal Theatine.” * 

Ortiz was a doctor of theology, influential with the Em- 
peror; who had shown himself very critical of the con- 
duct of Ignatius at Paris.” The Cardinal Theatine had been 
called to Rome from Venice and made a cardinal in Decem- 
ber 1536. Giovanni Pietro Caraffa was then a man of sixty. 
A descendant of one of the oldest families of the Neapolitan 
nobility, he showed from childhood an inclination for the 
Church. One of his uncles was a cardinal and obtained 
for him at the age of twenty-eight a promotion to the 
bishopric of Chieti. He wrought great reforms in his dio- 
cese and was sent two years later as papal nuncio to 
Naples. At the age of thirty-seven he was sent as legate 
to Henry VIII. In England he met Erasmus who praised 
his knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Theology.® 
Two years later, he was sent as nuncio to Spain where he 
became one of Ferdinand’s council and a royal chaplain. 
In 1524 he resigned both his bishoprics, distributed his 
property to needy relatives and the poor and founded a 
new order of priests who could own no property and were 
forbidden to beg. They must live on unasked gifts and 
their special object was the reform of the clergy. 


1 Confessions, p. 93. ? Ortiz’s change in favour of Ignatius is not explained, 
Astrain 86. Venturi, II, 91. * Pastor IV (2) 596. 
112 


A POWERFUL ENEMY 113 


He became the director of this order,* and, after the 
sack of Rome by the army of the Emperor settled in 
Venice. In two outbreaks of the pest his Theatines, as 
they were called, won great love and admiration by their 
courage and kindness to the ill and dying, and Caraffa ob- 
tained very strong influence both with the council of Ven- 
ice and with the Pope. The reason why Ignatius, during 
the year when he was waiting at Venice for his comrades, 
excited the disapproval of Caraffa might have remained 
unknown; for Ignatius never gave any reason why he 
feared Caraffa’s opposition. But it is explained by a let- 
ter, without signature or address, unquestionably written 
by Ignatius Loyola to Pietro Caraffa during the year 1536. 

The paragraphs essential to the full understanding of 
this long and sometimes obscure document are given be- 
cause it seems to the writer Loyola’s only serious mis- 
take in handling men. 

“Considering that the blessed life we so long for consists 
in an intimate and true love of God Our Creator and Lord, 
which binds and obliges us all to a sincere love .. . in 
the same Lord, who hopes to save us if we do not falter 
through our weakness, fault and misery, I have concluded 
to write this letter, without the ceremony so many use 
(which does no harm if it is done in the Lord). . . . So, 
laying aside all things which might incite or move us to 
leave true peace, internal and eternal, I beg you by the 
love and reverence for Christ our Creator, Redeemer and 
Lord, to read this with the same love and good will with 
which it is written... . 

“So with that will prompt and prepared to serve all those 
whom I perceive to be servants of my Lord, I will speak 
of three things with simplicity and love as if I were speak- 
ing to my own soul; I do this not in order to give counsel 
—which it is always better for us to take, and with hu- 
mility, than to give without humility—but rather to sug- 

“Pastor 357. Not the ostensible head. 


114 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


gest that we should dispose ourselves to ask it of the 
Lord; from whom comes all good judgment and all sane 
counsel. 

“The first is this. I think I have enough arguments .. . 
to believe, speaking in true peace, love and charity, that 
you ought not to separate in any way the company God 
has given you; so that, remaining better accompanied, 
you will be better able to offer greater service and praise 
to God: and certainly I do not express all my understand- 
ing on this point. ... 

“The second is this. For a person like yourself, ad- 
vanced in years and of a family so noble, so dignified and of 
such estate, to be a little better clad, and to have a room 
somewhat larger and somewhat better furnished than the 
others of your company chiefly because of those who come 
and go—so far as this is concerned I see no scandal or lack 
of edification in it. Nevertheless it appears great and grave 
wisdom, remembering how the blessed saints like St. 
Francis and St. Dominic and many others bore themselves 
when they founded their institutions, to have recourse to 
the true and highest wisdom, to ask and obtain more light 
in order to arrange all things to His greater service and 
honor. Many things are permitted which are not expe- 
dient, as St. Paul says of himself, in order that others may 
find no occasion for weakness but rather an example to 
go forward.... 

“The third is this. As I hold it a maxim that God Our 
Lord has created all things in this life for the use and pres- 
ervation of man, a fortiori for those who are better, and, 
as your holy and pious profession is a road toward growing 
better . . . I believe, that all those who are obedient to 
your rule and of stainless life, even although they do not 
preach nor exercise themselves so much in visible works 
of bodily mercy in order to devote themselves to other 
good works spiritual and of greater importance, ought to 


A POWERFUL ENEMY {15 


have food and clothing, according to the rule of Christ- 
tian charity; . . . For those who are more infirm or 
under greater care about the necessities of life have some 
apparent foundation for saying that it is most difficult 
to maintain themselves in the profession for these three 
very apparent reasons. In the first place they do not ask 
alms even though they have nothing to live on; secondly, 
they do not beg: thirdly, they do not exercise themselves 
so much in works of bodily pity like burying the dead, 
saying mass for them, etc. So far as the others are con- 
cerned: although they do not seek alms either, they do 
good works which are visible to the public: preaching, 
helping parish priests, etc. . . . and it is evident that the 
people would always be moved to support them and with 
much greater charity. . . . But so far as concerns those 
who live righteously more for the increase of inner piety, 
I can say that, not seeking alms but serving God Our Lord 
and confiding in His great goodness, it is enough to entitle 
them to be kept and sustained. 

‘“‘Besides the more infirm or more solicitous can answer 
, . . that St. Francis and the other blessed saints put their 
hope and trust in God Our Lord, but, for all that they did 
not neglect to use the most convenient means to preserve 
their convents for the greater service of the Divine Ma- 
jesty. They can say further that to do otherwise seems 
more like tempting the Lord they serve than taking the 
- way most fitting for His Service. 

“There are other things of more moment which I will 
leave in order not to discuss them in a letter—not things 
said or thought by me, but suggested and raised by others. 
All these things thus weighed and thought over, it is 
enough to suggest them as I would to my own soul. .. . 
always recommending ourselves to God Our Lord, .... 
as I do in my own affairs, that He may be pleased by His 
lofty grace to put His own most holy hand to all things so 


116 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


that all may turn out for His greater service and glory. 

“He who desires to be the servant of all the servants of 
God Our Lord.” 

It was rather strange that Ignatius, who was to become 
the greatest servant of the Papacy of his times, should at 
the first meeting with Caraffa have offended him. For 
the greatest historian of the Papacy has written of Ca- 
raffa’s election twenty years later: “For sixty years 
the new Pope had directed all his gifts of mind with the 
strength of an iron will and the fixity of a character which 
suffered no contradiction, towards one object—the res- 
toration of the position and the might, the purity and 
the dignity of the Church, beset within and without by 
foes.” 

It is true that Caraffa at sixty, when Ignatius met him 
at Venice, probably had some of the characteristics which 
marked the Pope of seventy-nine ‘‘who suffered no contra- 
diction and was very easily angered,” “who liked better to 
talk than to listen” and “took sudden likes and dislikes.” 
It is also probably true that the dislike of Spaniards for 
which he was so noted as Pope, may have been fixed on him 
twenty years before.° 

It may also perhaps be conceded, as two of the most 
scholarly modern biographers of Ignatius say, that this 
letter is written ‘‘with every delicacy” of phrase and 
thought by one who “did his best to express himself as 
politely and carefully as possible.’’® 

Making all these allowances, it seems difficult to avoid 
the conclusion that the fault in this break between two 
mighty servants of the same great ideal was with Ignatius. 
If we say that Caraffa might have pardoned the letter, 
we can also say that Ignatius, even if he had written it, 
might have torn it up. Caraffa was a man of varied expe- 
rience in the most difficult services of the Church. He had 


5 All this on Caraffa is based on Pastor V, 364 ff. ® Venturi, II, 88; 
Boehmer, 188. 


A POWERFUL ENEMY 117 


founded an order of reforming priests and directed it for 
some years. He was a scholar who had won the praise of 
the king of letters, Erasmus. Why should this bran-new 
master of arts from Paris, the mediocrity of whose schol- 
arly attainments ‘ was suggested in the vague and clumsy 
style of his letter, undertake to give any advice on such 
intimate questions as the proper distribution among the 
members of Caraffa’s order of the alms which came to it. 
The suggestion that Caraffa lived in too luxurious a way 
was superfluous for the man who, when he was forced 
against his will to obey the Pope’s command to become a 
cardinal, was living in so simple a room that he had to 
drive a nail in the wall to hang up his red hat because there 
was no table where he could lay it.* The suggestion that 
the members of the Order should be kept together and not 
dispersed, was not adopted by Ignatius himself; for he 
sent his comrades two by two throughout Italy. Ten or 
fifteen years later Ignatius might reasonably have as- 
sumed that he had valuable advice on such subjects to give 
to any man. But then ten years later Ignatius would not 
have written this letter. There is no other like it among 
the 6800 printed in his correspondence and it seems so 
lacking in that knowledge of human nature and skill in 
handling men which later characterized Ignatius, that it 
would be hard to find anywhere a better example of the 
exception which makes plain the rule. 

When the comrades got back from Rome to Venice they 
found it impossible to start for Jerusalem because of the 
war between the Venetians and the Turks. So they made 
their disposition to complete the year of waiting defined 
in their vow at Montmartre. Those who were not already 
ordained took the usual vows of a poor priest, i.e., a priest 
without benefice binding to certain duties and bringing 
in a certain income. It was decided that it would be 


"Lainez thought Ignatius had _ slight gilts, either for style or scholarship. 
Scripta, I, 394. *Paator, V}.357; 


118 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


better to separate and visit various cities of the Venetian 
territory, so Loyola, Lainez and Lefévre went to Vicenza, 
Xavier and Salmeron to Mont Celasius (Montelas), Hoces 
(a new recruit gained by Ignatius at Venice) and Codure 
to Treviso, Le Jay and Rodriguez to Bassano, Broet and 
Bobadilla to Verona. Loyola and his two comrades lodged 
in a ruined house outside the walls of Vicenza which had 
neither door nor windows, where they slept on a little straw 
they had brought with them. Twice a day two of the three 
went to beg in the city, getting only bread without meat or 
wine; but sometimes they were given a little vinegar. 
The one who remained in the house softened the crusts 
of bread by steeping them in hot water; but even of this 
rough fare they had barely enough to sustain life. In this 
way they passed forty days in prayer. At the end of that 
time, Codure joined them and the four began to preach; 
each going to a different public square. There he began 
his sermon by calling loudly to the people and waving 
his cap. Few came to listen but some good was done. 
People began to talk about them and gained enough 
confidence to give them plenty of food. The other com- 
rades had similar experiences before they all met at 
Vicenza, where they remained for a while together before 
separating to seek alms through the cities of the neigh- 
bourhood. They still hoped to go to Jerusalem, but, as 
there was no chance of a ship sailing at once, they agreed 
to divide among the university cities of Italy “‘to see if the 
Lord wished to call some students to join us.” So in 
couples they visited Rome, Siena, Bologna, Ferrara, 
Padua, ‘‘in all of which cities by the grace of Our Lord 
they gathered fruit.” They still were in danger of perse- 
cution from oversuspicious zealots, for at Padua the mis- 
sioners were arrested and put in chains. Over this im- 
prisonment for Christ’s sake Hoces “‘was so joyful that he 
did nothing but laugh all night. However in the morning 


A POWERFUL ENEMY 119 


the suffragan who had caused their arrest, when he learned 
what they were and what they wanted, set them free and 
treated them like his own sons, showing them all necessary 
spiritual favors so that by their ministrations many began 
to lead a new life and from morning until night they were 
busied in exhorting and hearing confessions.” ° 

At Ferrara, the Duke himself came to some sermons, 
confessed to the missioners, took communion and offered 
to give them all the alms necessary to get them to 
Jerusalem. At Bologna they had the same success and also 
in Siena, where they undertook another task, that of 
“teaching Christian doctrine to children with great satis- 
faction to the parents.” In Rome two of them lectured 
in the College of the Sapienza: one expounding the scrip- 
tures and the other scholastic philosophy. At the end of 
the year, since it was plainly impossible to go to Jerusalem, 
they decided to go to Rome and this time “the pilgrim 
also was to go because, the first time, when the comrades 
went, those two whose opposition he feared had shown 
themselves very kind.” *° So they all united in Rome about 
April 1538. 

During this time of the first missionary work and spirit- 
ual preparation for offering their first mass, Ignatius, tells 
us he went through a new stage of his inner spiritual life; 
or rather he returned to an older stage of spiritual expe- 
riences. 

He says: “During the time when he (the pilgrim) was 
at Vicenza and quite contrary to what happened to him at 
Paris, he had many spiritual visions besides many, so to 
speak, ordinary consolations from God—especially when 
he was in Venice getting ready for ordination to the priest- 
hood and also when he was preparing to say his first mass 
and during all his journeys of this time he had great super- 
natural visitations like those he used to have when he was" 


® Lainez, Scripta I, 118. * Confessions 94. 


120 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


at Manresa. Also when he was in Venice he knew (in his 
soul) that one of his comrades at Bassano was lying ill 
at the point of death. He himself was at that very moment 
ill of fever. Nevertheless he started on the journey and 
walked so fast that Lefevre who went along could not 
keep up with him and on that journey he received from 
God the assurance that his comrade would not die of that 
illness and he told Lefévre, and, when they arrived at 
Bassano the ill man was much consoled and quickly got 
well,” + 

On the journey to Rome, Ignatius had the most 
celebrated of his visions. He relates it in a few lines in his 
Confessions and Consalvez de Camara to whom he was 
dictating adds this note to the passage, “I who write these 
things said to the pilgrim when he narrated this, that 
Lainez told about it with some particulars. . And he said 
to me that all Lainez said was true, because he himself 
did not remember with such particularity. But at the 
time when he told Lainez about it he knows certainly 
that he said nothing which was not accurate.” ” 

Lainez’s account is as follows: “When we were going 
to Rome by the road through Siena, the Father had many 
spiritual sentiments; especially in relation to the euchar- 
ist. Lefévre and I said mass every day. He did not, but he 
communicated. Then he said to me that it seemed to 
him that God impressed on his heart these words: ‘I will be 
propitious to you at Rome,’ and our Father, not knowing 
what these words might mean, said: ‘I do not know what 
will become of us at Rome, perhaps we shall be crucified.’ 
Then another time he said that he seemed to see Christ 
with the cross on his shoulder and the Eternal Father near 
by, who said: ‘I wish you to take this man for your servant’ 
and so Jesus took him and said: ‘I will that thou shouldst 
serve me.’ And gaining from that vision great devotion 


™ Confessions 94, 7% Confessions 95. 


A POWERFUL ENEMY 121 


to the name of Jesus he wanted his congregation called 
The Company of Jesus.” 

This vision of assurance was needed, for evidently 
Loyola was depressed on entering Rome. He said to his 
companions that: “he saw the windows closed; meaning 
that they were to meet much opposition. He said also we 
must keep to ourselves and not enter into relations with 
women unless they are women of distinguished posi- 
tion.’’** 

These forebodings were not at first fulfilled. The com- 
rades lived in a vineyard house near the monastery of the 
Holy Trinity given to them as a lodging place by a Roman 
“for the love of God.” This they afterwards abandoned 
for a rented house nearer the centre of the city. It was not 
necessary for them very long to beg their bread, for the 
gifts of their friends soon sufficed for their support. Not 
long after their arrival at Rome, the comrades were joined 
by Pietro Codacio, a Lombard priest who gave up rich 
benefices to join them. He was an amicable and godly 
man, with a gift for practical affairs, and became their 
procurator or financial agent; not only for the Roman 
house but for the larger affairs of the company. He man- 
aged these for some ten years and showed himself so 
capable that the fathers were able to leave to him all care 
for collecting alms and to devote themselves to their 
spiritual duties toward their neighbours. He finally 
obtained the piece of ground chosen by Loyola and built 
on it the house of the Company. It was also due to him 
that they obtained their own church.” 

These poor pilgrim priests, as they called themselves, 
who gathered around Ignatius were extremely fearful of 
seeming to make a business of their services to their neigh- 
bours. It was against their custom to receive money from 
anyone with whom they had talked about religion or whose 


18 Venturi, I, 586, printed. Essortations, etc. “™ Confessions, 95. ™ Pol. I, 
66-81-362., 


122 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


confession they had heard, or for whom they had said 
mass; nor did they allow collections to be made when they 
preached. 

When Simon Rodriguez went to Lisbon on his way to 
the Indies by the request of the King of Portugal, he was 
received in the most intimate and friendly fashion by the 
King and Queen. But he would not accept their hospitality 
and insisted so firmly on begging his bread from door to 
door, that they were obliged to permit him to do it. Of 
course the guest of the King did not really need to beg from 
door to door and it was manifestly an act of piety and 
self-humiliation rather than a means of supplying want. 
Begging from door to door, ‘‘sancta mendicitas,” *° con- 
tinued to be used as a means of livelihood and still more 
as a means of grace, but it is evident that Ignatius learned 
by experience in regard to his comrades in the Company 
what he had learned by experience about students at Paris: 
that the need of begging their living often interfered very 
much with their work. 

Apparently the support of the labourers in the vineyard 
of the Lord, in all places where they were permanently 
established, drifted in the direction of money given by 
what might almost be called subscribers; regular or 
occasional. For example, two years after the assembly 
of the comrades at Rome when Lainez was on mission to 
Piacenza: “At length toward the end of the year he 
began by the order of Father Ignatius to accept what he 
needed from alms spontaneously offered. Before this, 
because of his love of poverty, and in order that he might 
freely give what he had freely received from God, he had 
lived by begging from door to door and with his comrade 
Lefévre had suffered great need of the bare necessities 
of life.” *” 

Codacio organized the expenses of the Roman establish- 

* Letts. IV, 494, 565, eg. Polanco, I, 83. 


A POWERFUL ENEMY 123 


-ment as best he could on the sort of irregular volunteer 
income which finally came to him; much of it from friendly 
cardinals He raised special building funds when they 
were needed Ignatius must at times have been rather 
difficult to serve for a man like Codacio in whom the busi- 
ness sense was highly developed. For Ignatius would 
never consent to let financial considerations interfere too 
much with his decisions on spiritual matters. One of the 
comrades at Rome wrote “Even in the days of the most 
extreme narrowness of our resources he would never refuse 
to accept anyone who seemed fit for the society and called 
of God to it.” * 

On the other hand, in dark days when there was no 
money and disaster hung like a black cloud overhead, his 
calm trust in God cheered all hearts. When they were 
building their new house and creditors came to seize the 
furniture, Ignatius was not at all disturbed. ‘‘Well,” he 
said, “if they take the beds we will sleep on the ground. 
We are paupers and we can lead the life of paupers.” ** A 
totally unexpected gift of two hundred gold pieces paid 
the threatening note of hand. Another time, near the end 
of Ignatius’ life, his secretary Polanco could not beg or 
raise in any way the money to continue the German 
College at Rome. Ignatius shut himself in his room for 
prayer. Then calling Polanco and two of the old fathers, 
he said he had commended the situation to God. ‘I am,” 

he continued ‘‘neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet 
but I am certain God will provide. You” he said, turning 

to Polanco ‘‘will see it within six months.” When the 

six months drew near its end Ribadeneira, who had gone 

to Germany, wrote to know the outcome and was told 

that the day after the receipt of his letter sums had been 

brought to them in alms great enough to pay all debts.” 

For more than ten years Codacio carried on his broad 

8 Rib., 2nd Life, 599. ™ Rib., 588. ” Ribad., 2nd Life, 603. 


124 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


shoulders the heavy burden of the money needs of the 
Company and when he was stricken by apoplexy just as he 
was entering the room of Ignatius after luncheon, his 
brethren asked in dismay: ‘Where shall we find his 
successor for he made all money cares so completely his 
own that no one of us knows anything about it?” Not so, 
however, Ignatius, who immediately took in ten novices. 

In addition to this inspiring example of “the Father” the 
brethren were much comforted by incidents which followed 
the death of their treasurer. ‘The steward of the house 
was crossing a deserted place near the Colosseum when an 
unknown man appeared who gave him a purse with almost 
a hundred gold pieces and went away. When he got home, 
told what had happened, and showed the gold pieces, there 
were some who feared that the change which takes place 
when evil spirits offer money which afterwards turns into 
glowing coals, might also occur with this money. But it 
was real gold which seemed to be newly minted. It did 
not change its form but proved good for the needs of 
the house and the payment of debts. A day or two later 
when the steward was going to market, as was his custom, 
before dawn, another unknown man met him, gave him a 
great sum in newly minted gold (some sixty or seventy 
pieces) and went away. At about the same time when I 
was searching a certain open part of the house where 
rubbish and scraps of paper were in a chest, in order to see 
if there were any letters there, I stirred up the rubbish and 
found, wrapped up in unused paper, a great number of 
new gold pieces. So, as many believe, the divine goodness, 
by means of the angels, wished to make up to us for the 
diligence and skill in his office of Father Pietro Codacio. 
When I told this to the vicar of the city he said ‘Do not 
doubt that also these alms have been procured for your 
house by Pietro Codacio for I do not doubt that the charity 
of this same Pietro in heaven and the faith and hope of 


A POWERFUL ENEMY 125 


Father Ignatius on earth have obtained this help directly 
from the goodness of God.’ ”’”? 

How great the sense of loss was among his comrades, 
for this humble helper in realizing the ideal of Ignatius, 
may be judged from the fact that some feared it might be 
mocked by devils and all believed it was helped by angels. 

The ideals and the character of Ignatius were now fully 
ripened. After this he did not change in any essential 
respect and few lives have been more self-consistent, more 
all of a piece, than the eighteen years which he spent, 
practically without break, in Rome. He was forty-seven 
years old and for seventeen years since his conversion, ex- 
ternal and internal experience and an iron will had been 
moulding him into a most powerful personality. 

But in spite of all his power, Ignatius was not yet clear 
in his mind what he would do. His plan of going to 
Palestine first alone, and then with a band of chosen com- 
rades in order to serve God and help his fellow man among 
the heathen, could not be carried out. He does not seem 
to have been much disappointed over the blocking of that 
long cherished plan adopted by his comrades in the oath 
of Montmartre. He saw the paths of the sea closed by the 
Turk. Perhaps he saw also, after two years in Italy, that 
there was much work to be done for the Church among the 
Christians of Europe as well as among the infidels of Asia. 
At all events the second clause of the oath of Montmartre 
must be kept and they were at Rome to put themselves at 
the command of the Pope and go wherever he might send 
them. 

But the Pope had gone to Nice to make peace between 
the Emperor and the King of France and nobody knew 
how long the negotiations might last. So they determined 
to do whatever they could find to do. Before they could 
do very much, almost as soon as they were all assembled 
in Rome, they ran into very serious trouble; the most 

STO, 363. 


126 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


serious of eight inquiries before the Inquisition to which 
Ignatius had been obliged to respond.” He gives an 
account of this grave affair in the following extracts from 
a long letter he wrote at the end of the year to his old 
friend and helper Isabel Roser of Barcelona. 

“T can well believe that you are a little astonished that 
I have not written you more often, as indeed I wished to 
do, because, if I forget what I owe to Our Lord by your 
hands with such sincere love and good will, I think that 
His Divine Majesty will not remember me. The cause 
of my delay in writing has been due to an affair which 
has brought us during eight months the rudest opposition 
or persecution which we have ever met in our entire life. 
. . . Popular rumours spread abroad without mentioning 
names have made us suspected and odious to many people 
and brought upon us great scandal. . . . In order that 
you may understand the affair from the beginning I will 
give you some account of it. It is more than a year since 
three of the comrades arrived here in Rome as I remem- 
ber I wrote you. Two commenced, by command of the 
Pope, to teach in the Sapienza. I applied myself to give 
the Spiritual Exercises near Rome as well as at Rome. 
We agreed we would do this in order to have some edu- 
cated men or people of importance on our side; or to 
speak more exactly on the side of God our Lord... . 
We did this in order not to have so much contradiction 
from worldlings and so be able to preach His holy word 
more freely. ... After we had gained by these exer- 
cises (God working in us) some in our favour (and they 
were persons learned and of much reputation) we de- 
cided, four months after our arrival to assemble all 
the comrades here . . . and we were careful to get from 
the Legate license to preach, exhort and hear confes- 
sion. When we had it, four or five of us commenced 
to preach on Sundays and holy days in different churches. 

™ His letter to the King of Portugal, Letts. I, 296. 


A POWERFUL ENEMY 127 


. . - We were finally obliged to call our secret de- 
tractors before the magistrates. When one of them 
found himself before the magistrates, the others be- 
gan to be afraid and as they were rich personages, 
one with an income of a thousand ducats and the 
other of six hundred, all well known in curial circles 
and intimate with cardinals and other persons of posi- 
tion in high circles of the Church, they gave us a great 
deal of trouble. But finally the chief among them being 
forced to appear ... said that they had heard us 
preaching and teaching and could find no fault in our life 
and doctrine. . . . The governor wished to let the matter 
lapse in silence but we demanded some written state- 
ment of the good or evil in our doctrine, in order to stop 
the scandal among the people. We could not getit.... 
Finally I went to the Pope’s summer castle and talked 
alone with His Holiness in his room for an hour. I told 
him plainly all the times process had been brought against 
me in Spain and how I had been arrested in Alcala and 
Salamanca. I did this in order that no one could tell 
him more about it than I did... . Pointing out how 
necessary it was that we should be cleared, not only 
before God but also before the public, I begged His Holi- 
ness to order a full examination. The Pope . . . ordered 
a formal hearing in our case. . . . Sentence has been 
given in our favour. So we give thanks to God that our 
work has never ceased and, now that our innocence has 
been finally declared, we hope to do more in preaching 
and teaching children.” 

There was something behind all this which Loyola does 
not mention; perhaps because he thought it unimportant. 

The little band of poor priests were not the attacked 
but the attackers. One of the most distinguished 
preachers in Rome was a certain Augustinian Eremite 
Agostino Mainardo. Six years before the arrival of 

* Letts. I, 137. *4 Polanco I, 79. 


128 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Loyola and his friends at Rome, Mainardo, while preach- 
ing in Asti, had process begun against him and was pro- 
hibited from preaching. He had obtained three years 
later a papal letter recognizing his doctrine as sound and 
forbidding interference with his preaching. Armed with 
this, he preached during Lent at Rome with great suc- 
cess. But he was a Lutheran, that is, he held Lutheran 
doctrine, though probably he was not aware of it for he 
defended his doctrine by the authority of tradition and 
of St. Augustine. Some of the comrades heard him preach 
and recognized at once Lutheran doctrine such as they 
had heard at Paris. They took notes, and, after trying 
in vain to convert the preacher by private conversations, 
they determined to preach doctrine opposed to his errors 
in various places. He had many friends and admirers 
and it was by them that the scandals and rumours about 
Ignatius and his comrades were spread throughout Rome. 
The boldness of Ignatius, above all his frank conversa- 
tion with the Pope, saved him; for all the comrades wanted 
after the imperfect hearing before the legate to take his 
advice and let the affair drop.** Ignatius was right in 
thinking this very dangerous. Ten years later a new 
inquisitor at Rome insisted that there had been and was 
evidence to prove that the followers of Loyola were sod- 
omites, Lutherans and misusers of the confessional. He 
expressed the confident hope that Loyola “unless worldly 
considerations interfered with a righteous judgment” 
would yet die at the stake.” 

This was, it is true, the sort of prosecutor which re- 
gards every acquittal as a calamity; a bulldog type of 
court officer known to the history of all courts. But it 
was more than usually common among the inquisitors of 
the faith; whose processes were not so solicitous about 
saving the innocent, if only they might be sure that they 
would by no means clear the guilty. The boldness of 

* Pol. p. 65. ™ Lainez Sc. 374. ™ Venturi I, 637-641. Cited. Boehmer, 233. 


A POWERFUL ENEMY 129 


Ignatius therefore saved him later from serious danger. 

The first heretic opponent of Ignatius finally recog- 
nized his own lack of orthodoxy and fled to southern 
Switzerland where, after long service as a Protestant min- 
ister, he died at an advanced age. His two chief admirers 
at Rome fell four years later into the hands of the 
Inquisition. One of them, condemned to death in spite 
of the intercession of Ignatius, escaped from prison and 
disappeared. His valuable benefices were taken from him, 
his large fortune confiscated and he was publicly burned 
in effigy. The other was kept in prison for the rest of 
his life.** 


* Venturi II, 175. Camara Mem. Scripta I, 307. 


CHAPTER Ix 
THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 


Up to the conclusion of this affair the impression which 
Ignatius and his comrades had made upon the city of 
Rome was slight or unfavorable. The Pope indeed had 
shown himself gracious. He invited some of them to 
come every two weeks to talk theology at his luncheon 
table." They had made also a number of influential 
friends, like their great patron Cardinal Gasparo Con- 
tarini, whose learning, charm and piety had gained him 
the name of the “ornament of the Italian nation.”* The 
tone of uncritical eulogy with which the life of Loyola 
came to be discussed by his followers of the seventeenth 
century, led them to exaggerate the first effects of the 
preaching of his comrades at Rome; as if the whole city 
had been profoundly stirred or even converted. Ignatius 
himself speaks very modestly of the results, and Lainez 
wrote ten years later of their first preaching: ‘At least 
it served as a mortification to pride and some souls found 
profit in our sermons.”° Ignatius indeed preached in 
his own language; the others tried to preach in Italian, in 
which none of them except Lefévre was very fluent. They 
made their first strong impression on the city not by edu- 
cation or elogquence—though they had one and soon de: 
veloped the other—but by practical deeds of Christian 
duty which dispelled the scandals against them secretly 
spread abroad by the friends of the popular preacher 
whose heretical doctrine they had opposed. It may well 


Letts. I, 141. ? Pastor, V, 105. 
* Scripta, I, p. 120. Comp. Venturi II, 151 & 152 notes. 
130 


THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 131 


be that Ignatius used this first experience in mission work 
to guide him in giving instruction to those he later sent 
on difficult and varied missions; for no man ever learned 
more out of his own experience about how to handle other 
men. It became his habit to instruct his missioners or 
envoys, whether their special task was to preach, or to 
teach, or to give counsel, to spend as much strength as 
they could spare from that special task in deeds of kind- 
ness to their fellowmen. 

Loyola’s first new work of charity at Rome was open- 
ing a refuge and a bread line for the ‘down and outs” 
of his day. There were many of these in the year 1539. 
For the winter was very cold and bread was scarce and 
dear. Driven by hunger the unemployed swarmed into 
the city where they slept in the streets and squares, 
starving and half frozen.* The heads of church and state 
seemed not to care. But the ten poor priests went out 
every night to gather up the hungry and sick and give 
them food, fire and shelter in the half ruined building 
where they lodged. For the sick they had a few beds, 
for the rest straw, for all bread—though sometimes barely 
enough. The number of these guests whom they com- 
pelled to come in from the highways, grew from night to 
night until finally it mounted to three hundred, and, 
during the day, the poor priests begged the bread and 
wood and straw to welcome them. The example was 
contagious. Arrangements were finally made to shelter 
and feed these miserable people in the hospitals and poor- 
houses, until three thousand were cared for every night; 
a large number for a city of less than 40,000 inhabitants. 

Other charity Loyola gave to the poor who were not 
in the street, but suffering in bare houses. For these he 
collected large sums of money and, when need was, he 
diverted to this use money given for the support of the 

‘Pastor II, 393. 


132 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


comrades; until sometimes there was not a penny left 
in the house. 

The poor priests had already shown a liking for teach- 
ing the elements of religion to children and the first work 
in which the Pope employed the whole band was instruct- 
ing all the children of the schools in religion. The gov- 
ernor of the city was ordered to take the necessary steps 
to enable them to do this. Later Loyola was to found 
in Rome other works of mercy: an asylum for orphans, 
a school for Jewish boys, a house of refuge for fallen 
women. But just now the attention of the ten under his 
lead was turned toward a much greater foundation: the 
Company of Jesus. ; 

Most of Loyola’s biographers down to recent times® 
and even one of his three most scholarly latest biographers, 
have fallen into an error in regard to this foundation. 
There is a natural tendency among the biographers of 
men whose lives have wrought great effects in history, to 
attribute to them a sort of unhuman prescience by making 
them conscious from the beginning of their careers, of the 
goals to which they finally attained. Both the enemies 
and the friends of Oliver Cromwell, for instance, were 
long accustomed to make the false assumption that the 
simple country gentleman had cherished for years a plan 
to replace the English monarchy by a commonwealth ruled 
by the godly under his leadership; or as his enemies said, 
had with long sustained malice hypocritically plotted to 
kill his lawful king. But usually he goes farthest who 
does not try to see the way too far ahead. This was cer- 
tainly true of Ignatius. He moved as the voice of God 
in his soul called him and followed step by step the lead- 
ings of Providence. This is not an abstract conclusion. We 
have the strongest direct testimony to prove it. Polanco 
(Ignatius’ secretary) writes that when the brethren took 
the vow of Montmartre “it never entered into their heads 

*See Venturi, II, p. 200. 


THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 133 


to found a new religious order.”” Lainez, one of the orig- 
inal fathers, sustains this by writing, ‘““when we were at 
Paris our intention was not to found an order, but to pass 
in poverty a life dedicated to helping our neighbours by 
preaching and serving in hospitals and to go to Jerusalem 
to help ourselves and others, the faithful and the infidel.” 
A letter written later by order of Ignatius says, “Father 
Ignatius and the first fathers did not go from Paris to 
Italy to found an order, but to go to Jerusalem and preach 
and die among the infidels.”° Polanco again writes, 
“When in the spring of 1538 our brethren came together 
at Rome, they did not propose to themselves in thought 
to found any perpetual institution or order, but to de- 
vote themselves to the care of souls wherever the Pope 
might wish to send them.” * 

We may be glad there is such strong contemporary 
evidence against a deliberate effort on the part of Ignatius 
“to use reserve and not frankly express his ideas or un- 
roll before the eyes of his comrades the plan he had con- 
ceived.” * If he had practised this kind of silence, con- 
cealing for years from his intimate friends at Paris his 
real intentions in forming that band of spiritual knights 
errant, it would have been a lack of frankness, suggest- 
ing grave doubts of the sincerity of the tender and beau- 
tiful friendship which bound this little band to him and 
united them to each other. 

Now that they were finally delivered from the danger of 
the Inquisition, had gained by the frankness of their leader 
the manifest favour of the Pope, and won by their charity 
to the poor the trust of the people of Rome, the question 
arose: Since they were not to go to Jerusalem, what 
should they do? 

In March 1539 the nine poor priests then present in 
Rome (one had been added to their fellowship and two 


*Letts, V, 25. ‘Polanco, I, 51-70. Lainez, Scripta IV, p. 114. Compare 
Pol. 79, Letts. V, 259. Venturi, II. 200. Boehmer, 149. * Astrain, 115. 


134 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


sent by the Pope to reform a cloister in Siena) gave them- 
selves up to a careful and prayerful discussion of the 
problem before them. When their work of the day was 
done, they met in conference. At first they had to decide 
a general question: should they or should they not found 
a company which should not end with their lives? After 
discussion and reflection the answer was unanimously, yes. 
The question what this institution was to be called was 
quickly decided in favor of the Company of Jesus. 
Ignatius told his secretary, at a time when the name was 
criticized as claiming for the Company what belonged to 
all Christians, “that even if all the brethren should wish 
to change it and all others (except the Pope) should agree 
it ought to be changed, he would never consent, because 
he had received such plain signs of God’s approval of it 
that to give it up would be, for him, acting against God’s 
will.’’® 

The third question was not so quickly decided. It was: 
Shall we, like other orders, elect a leader and all make to 
him a vow of obedience? The pros and cons of the ques- 
tion were most carefully discussed in many meetings, and 
finally it was decided, at the beginning of the year 1539, 
in the affirmative. In about two months more they fixed 
the outlines of a plan for the Company of Jesus to be 
laid before the Pope under five heads. The influence of 
Loyola’s old military training seems to be plain in the 
trumpet tones of the first phrases of the opening sentence, 
his experience in helping and teaching men in the latter 
half of it. ‘‘Whoever wishes to be a warrior of God under 
the banner of the cross in our Company, which we call 
by the name of Jesus, and to serve only God and His 
Vicar on earth, must keep in his mind after he has taken 
the vow of perpetual chastity that he is part of a com- 
munity founded chiefly to aid souls in Christian living 
and Christian doctrine, to spread the word of God by 

°Pol. 73, 79. 


THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 135 


preaching, by spiritual exercises, by deeds of neighbourly 
kindness and especially by the instruction of children and 
the ignorant in Christianity. 

“He must always have God before his eyes and strive 
with all his might towards the goal shown him by God, 
keeping always before him those rules which are in a 
manner a way to God. The decision about the place or 
position in service which belongs to every man must rest 
entirely in the hands of the prepositus to be chosen by us. 
This prepositus shall have power to make statutes with 
the advice of the brothers in concilium when the majority 
shall always decide. The executive power and the power 
to give orders belong only to the prepositus (general). 

“‘All members, so long as life lasts, shall every day be- 
think themselves of the fact that this Company and all 
in it are under the command of our holy master Paul III 
and his successors, so that we are bound to give him some- 
thing more than the obedience of ordinary clergymen. 
We are bound by special oath to do whatever he orders 
us to do; whether he sends us to the Turks or to the new 
world, or to the Lutherans, or to any other believers or 
unbelievers. 

“Every member shall promise obedience to the general 
in all things concerning the rule. He on his side must be 
always mindful of the goodness, the gentleness and love of 
Christ. Both shall lay it on their hearts to instruct chil- 
dren and the ignorant in Christian doctrine, in the ten 
commandments and other elementary things. 

“We have learned by experience that a way of living 
as far from greed and as near to evangelic poverty as 
possible is more edifying to our neighbours and that 
Christ will provide for his servants. We cannot hold any 
legal right to any income or real property, but must be 
content with the simple use of things necessary to life by 
the consent of the owners. 

“All ordained members are to say the breviary accord- 


136 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


ing to the rites of the Church, not however all together 
in choir in order that they may not be turned aside 
from the duties of neighbourly love. They shall not 
use in divine service either the organ or chanting. For 
these things, which adorn the divine worship of other 
orders, we have found by experience to be no small 
hindrance to us; since we devote a great part of the day 
and night to the bodily and spiritual care of the sick. 

“We make this sketch of what we do and propose in 
order to warn our successors against falling into two errors 
we have escaped. First, no one shall ever enjoin upon the 
members of our company fasts, scourgings, going bare- 
footed or bareheaded, fixed colours of dress and fixed 
foods, hair shirts or other ascetic observances. We do 
not forbid these things because we condemn them, but 
because we do not wish our brethren to find in them an 
excuse for withdrawing themselves from the duties we 
have undertaken. 

“The second error to be avoided is this. No one can 
be received into the company unless he has been very 
thoroughly tested for a long time.” *° 

Having thus reached unanimously conclusions which 
could be formulated into a general outline of the institu- 
tion they wished to found, they left it to Ignatius to get 
the Pope’s permission and went their several ways to their 
tasks already assigned to them. Whether or not Ignatius 
was the penman of the capitoli (10), he plainly was the 
best qualified man to get papal approval for them. He 
sent the document at once to his great friend Cardinal 
Contarini, who took the first good opportunity to lay it 
before the Pope, who sent it to the master of the holy 
palace to give judgment as to whether there might be 
unwittingly anything heretical in it. This authority took 


* From the German of Boehmer translated from the Minuta of Contarini 
in Vatican archives, 242 n 3. Italian version Venturi Vol. I, 297. 


THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 137 


two months to make up his mind to send word to Loyola 
that it was “pious and holy.” The next day Ignatius 
forwarded the document to Contarini who at once read it 
to the Pope. He approved it without difficulty and the 
affair was sent to the secretariat to prepare the necessary 
documents. 

Cardinal Ghinucci into whose hands the matter came 
had been a papal secretary since the days of Julius IT and 
was extremely learned in canon law. It was not strange 
that this veteran of the office, a highly trained bureau- 
crat, should be disposed to be very critical of this re- 
quest to found a new order. He suspected first those 
features of it which were original and unknown to the 
standard constitution of a religious order. He objected 
to the prohibition of ascetic rules for the members because 
it might be used by the Lutherans in their attack on the 
monks. He objected to the special vow of obedience to 
the Pope because it might suggest that everybody was not 
already bound to obey the Pope, etc., etc. In short he 
and Contarini, who was delighted with the five points as 
they stood, evidently developed differences of opinion 
which compelled the Pope to call into their council a 
third person. He chose Bartolommeo Guidiccioni 're- 
cently appointed a cardinal. He had been the Pope’s 
vicar when the latter was bishop of Parma, and the Pope 
had great confidence in him.”* He took a position on the 
question of the Company of Jesus which differed from 
both of the men to whom the Pope had first assigned the 
matter. Contarini was heartily for it. Ghinucci was 
against it because he did not like its rules. Guidiccioni 
said he approved entirely of the suggested rules. If any 
new orders were to be allowed there could not be better 
ones. But he believed that no new orders ought to be per- 
mitted, and all existing orders ought to be reduced to 
four: Dominicans, Franciscans, Cistercians and Black 

“= Fastor, V, 135, 123. 


138 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Benedictines. This new commissioner therefore, though 
for entirely different reasons, voted no with Cardinal 
Ghinucci, and the desire of the ten poor pilgrim priests 
seemed to be hopeless. 

But Ignatius was not a man to give up hope easily in 
a matter which he believed according to the will of God. 
This will he felt. was now being blocked by the great 
enemy of truth. It was freely conceded among the poor 
pilgrim priests that their new opponent was “a good and 
pious man and very skilled in church law, but Ignatius, 
recognizing a stratagem of the devil, thought that the Car- 
dinal must be won by prayers and sacrifices, which he took 
care should be applied to this affair most liberally: for 
more than two thousand masses were offered to God on his 
behalf. Chiefly by these (though there were other rea- 
sons) the opposition of Cardinal Guidiccioni was changed - 
into approval.”’*” 

The payment of this spiritual debt vowed by Ignatius 
took some time for so small a number of priests. A year 
after the granting of the papal bull, two members of the 
company on their way towards a dangerous mission in 
Ireland were ordered to say as many masses as possible 
on the vow, and to send back a strict account of the num- 
ber. Some months later Xavier on his way to India wrote 
back that he and his comrades had said 250 masses for 
Guidiccioni.** 

“The other reasons” for the change of attitude by the 
good cardinal were the skilful use Ignatius made of the 
influential friends won by his own work and that of his 
comrades. ) 

The Duke of Ferrara was a warm friend of the poor 
pilgrim priests, three of whom had worked in his capital. 
He was very glad to write on their behalf to his friends 
in Rome and especially to his brother Cardinal Ippolito. 


* Pol. 72. Lainez, Scripta. I, 122 says 3,000 masses. *™ Letts, I, 197. Mon 
Xav. I, 245. 


THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 139 


Seven years later Ignatius sending to Jay his authorization 
to go on mission to Ferrara, wrote in a message he mani- 
festly wishes to have quoted: “I can truly say that we 
are not under such great obligation to any one as we 
are to the Duke of Ferrara for the foundation of our 
company: for whose increase may God use, as the prime 
and most efficacious instrument, the gracious favour and 
help of His Excellency.”’** Guidiccioni had been for years 
vicar-general in Parma. After he left for Rome two of 
the poor priests had worked in Parma and made a very 
strong impression. So the elders of the city government 
were asked by the missioners to intercede with their for- 
mer vicar. They did so directly but without effect. Then, 
by whose suggestion we do not know, they tried an indirect 
approach. Pope Paul III had an illegitimate daughter 
Costanza born to him while he was still Cardinal Farnese. 
She was married to the Count of Santafiore and had very 
great influence with her father.** She did not always 
use it well. Her son was made a cardinal at the age of 
sixteen, and his life as he grew older was not an orna- 
ment to the purple robe. She was responsible for the 
naming of four other cardinals whose character and careers 
shocked the friends of reform. The elders of Parma 
wrote to her thinking that she might be willing to use 
her influence not for greed or for ecclesiastical politics.*® 

We do not know just what influences were the most 
efficient, but Guidiccioni proposed a compromise: that 
the company should be authorized but limited to sixty 
members. So on the 27th of September, 1540, a bull of 
the Pope founded the Company of Jesus on the basis 
of the five capitoli: certain things being omitted and cer- 
tain others more definitely expressed. The Company was 
given power to draw up its own constitutions in accord 
with these general ideas. Inside of three years the lim- 


“Letts. I, 569. ™ Pastor, V, 136. n. 6. * Printed, Venturi, I, 572. Pastor 
V, 138.508. 


140 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


itation on their members was removed by a second bull. 

This long wait of sixteen months to get permission to 
carry out his plan of service to the Church and his fellow 
men, must have been very trying for Ignatius. He had 
evidently thought the matter settled when the plan re- 
ceived the hearty verbal approval of the Pope. He wrote 
soon after to his nephew the Lord of Loyola a jubilant 
letter: ‘God has put His most holy hand to this work 
and, against great adversity, contradiction and opposing 
judgments, our whole method of procedure has been ap- 
proved by the Vicar of Christ, giving us entire power to 
make constitutions as according to our way of life we 
shall find most fitting.” He suggests to his nephew 
and sister-in-law that they should contribute towards the 
company. ‘So since I, although most unworthy, have 
been enabled by divine grace to establish foundations 
approved of the Pope for the Company of Jesus (so we 
have called it), I ought to exhort you and very thoroughly 
to build on these foundations thus laid, so that you may 
have no less merit in the building than I in the founda- 
tion and all by the hand of God.” * 

This letter to his nephew is psychologically important 
because it shows unmistakably Ignatius’ perfectly clear 
consciousness that he was the founder of the company. 
He does not allude to the help of his comrades. He speaks 
only of the help of God. True, the others had deliberated 
with him most carefully as to whether there should be 
any company and as to what the company should be. 
We know that one of the most fruitful ideas (the idea of 
conducting colleges) came from Lainez. But neverthe- 
less the Company of Jesus was not the result of mass 
action. It was the child of Ignatius and without him it 
would never have come into existence. Every one of 
the first fathers had been trained in the Spiritual Exer- 
cises which was so to speak the slow distillation of 

Letts. I 149, 


THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 141 


Ignatius’ religious life and experience. They were bound 
to each other through their relation to him. They acted 
in unison because each followed his lead. It might well 
have been doubted whether any one could rear the walls 
save he who had laid the foundation. 

Knowing as we do from these letters to his family 
that Ignatius clearly recognized this fact that he was 
under God the sole founder of the company, his attitude 
toward becoming the first general of the company is 
psychologically hard to understand. 

The election did not as might be expected follow at 
once upon the issue of the bull. The reason is very simple. 
Seven of the ten were busy away from Rome. This did 
not block the election, for it had been decided some 
months before that pressing questions might be decided 
by the fathers in Rome together with those in Italy who 
could assemble or send their written votes. On missions 
of the Pope two of the fathers were on their way to India, 
one had started for Germany, four were working in 
Italy and one of these could not leave his work. Seven 
months after the publication of the bull of institution, 
six fathers met in Rome, March 1541, to adopt constitu- 
tions and elect a general. They accepted various parts 
of the constitutions already formulated by Loyola and 
Codure and took action equivalent to appointing them a 
committee with power to complete the document. They 
then proceeded to the election.** It was determined that 
after three days of prayerful thought each should bring 
in a sealed written vote. These votes were to be put in 
a locked chest, where were already the votes of the 
fathers in Germany and Portugal and kept for three days 
“for fuller confirmation of the affair.” 

When the chest was opened it was found that the votes 
of all were for Inigo, except Bobadilla who sent no vote 
and Loyola whose vote read as follows: “I vote to make 


8De la Torre, Constitutiones, 313. 


142 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


him general in our Lord who receives the most votes, 
except myself. If the company is of another opinion and 
thinks it better and more apt to the greater honoring of 
our Lord, I am prepared to appoint the general.” 

This vote makes evident of course that he expected 
to be elected, but it also gave notice that he would re- 
fuse to accept the office. Of that refusal he himself gives 
the following account. ‘Inmigo acted according to what 
he felt in his soul affirming that he had more will and 
desire to be governed than to govern. He felt that he was 
not strong enough to govern himself and how much less 
could he rule others. Considering this and his many evil 
habits past and present, his many sins, faults and bodily 
miseries, he would declare until he had more light that 
he would never undertake such a task. He begged them 
to consider for three or four days recommending them- 
selves to God our Lord, in order to find some one who 
could better undertake the task.” At length, though un- 
willingly, the companions decided to vote again. The re- 
sult was the same. Then Inigo said: that to satisfy 
his conscience he would leave the matter in the hands of 
his confessor, Father Theodore, a friar of St. Peter de 
Montorio, making to him a general confession of a!l his 
sins, and giving him a full description of all his infirmities 
and bodily miseries. After that the confessor in the name 
of Christ our Lord should order him to accept or decline. 

The companions when they found they could not do 
otherwise, agreed to this also, though unwillingly and with 
dissatisfaction. Inigo and his confessor then spent three 
days together by themselves. When Inigo had finished 
his confession and asked his confessor what he had de- 
cided about his commands, the confessor answered that 
he (Ignatius) seemed to be resisting the Holy Spirit. With 
all that, Ihigo asked his confessor to recommend the affair 
longer to God and then with a quiet soul to write out 


THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 143 


his opinion and send it under seal to the company. Then 
Inigo went back to the house. 

The third day his confessor sent a sealed opinion which 
was read before all. It decided that Ifiigo ought to under- 
take the business and government of the company. He 
accepted and ordered that the first Friday after Easter 
they should all make the pilgrimage to the seven churches 
of Rome and in St. Paul make their vows according to the 
bull granted by His Holiness.” 

That Ignatius regarded his conduct in this matter as 
important is shown by his writing out this full account 
of it: a thing which he did for no other incident of his 
life except in letters. His Confessions were dictated, 
and long after the events described. 

It has been suggested that his long hesitation was only 
a survival of the ecclesiastical code of good manners of 
the middle ages, which made a deprecatory attitude 
towards all ecclesiastical honours obligatory as a matter of 
custom in all well-bred prelates who knew how things 
ought to be done. This attitude, described by a phrase, 
nolo episcopari, did become a sort of unavoidable conven- 
tion. But precisely that makes it improbable that Loyola 
was affected by it. He did not care much for conven- 
tions. We have seen how he had worked out of the 
attitude toward asceticism suggested to him at first 
by the life of the average medieval saint, how in spite 
of his own love of chanting he had put aside the prayers 
said in choir which for generations had been the regu- 
lar stock centre of monastery life. He would not have 
been apt to go back to the past to pick up this piece of 
ancient clerical manners. To know his life at first hand 
in his own acts and words and those of his friends, is to 
be convinced that he was a singularly sincere man. To 
play, even half unconsciously, a little pious comedy, no 

De la Torre, 313. 


144 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


matter how edifying it had long been thought, would not 
have been apt to seem to him useful. 

The element of sincerity in this long struggle to escape 
from a burden which after all was inevitable, was his real 
shrinking from the task. He felt indeed that by the grace 
of God he had escaped from even mental consent to mortal 
sin and told one of his companions so. But there was noth- 
ing of the pharisee about him. He felt he had those “evil 
habits, faults and sins” of which he spoke, for he later said 
to one of his associates that he could ‘“‘learn something of 
every inmate of the house but himself.” He knew also his 
feeble strength and weak health and twice during his 
service as general he tried to resign. There was no self-cen- 
tred hypochondria about this. He suffered at intervals in- 
tensely, and his physicians did not know how to help him. 
He never expected to live long and it seemed to his inti- 
mates little short of a miracle that he was general for fif- 
teen years. He knew that in learning and facility of ex- 
pression he was inferior to some of his companions. He 
had felt the call of God to be founder of the Company. 
He was not sure that he was the best general to lead it into 
the great future he foresaw for it. 

There is another possible reason for the minute descrip- 
tion by Ignatius of his own enigmatic conduct, which may 
be conjectured from his great care to record twice that his 
comrades were reluctant and dissatisfied to grant delay 
and did so only because they could not help it. Ignatius 
had eight times been attacked for heresy or unchristian 
conduct, and he perhaps foresaw the repeated opposition 
which the new Company would have to face. He may 
have felt it better to keep a clear record lest anybody 
should accuse him of acting out of ambition to become 
head of a great institution. If this were so it was a weak- 
ness; but it was the weakness of a noble mind conscious 
of rectitude before God and wishing to make it plain be- 


THE FORMATION OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 145 


fore his fellow-men: especially before those who might 
follow him in the Company of Jesus. 

All walking together the six made their pilgrimage 
to the churches and then on St. Paul’s day Ignatius said 
mass. Holding in his hand the paten with the consecrated 
host, he read the following vow to the companions kneel- 
ing before him: “I promise to Almighty God and the 
Pope His Vicar on earth, before His Virgin Mother and 
the whole celestial court and in the presence of the Com- 
pany, perpetual poverty, chastity and obedience accord- 
ing to the way of life in the bull of the Company of Our 
Lord Jesus and contained in the constitutions adopted or 
to be adopted. Besides I promise special obedience to the 
Chief Pontiff in regard to the missions mentioned in the 
bull. In addition I promise I will take pains to see that 
boys are instructed in the beginnings of faith according to 
the same bull and constitutions.” 

Having made this oath he communed. Then he took 
six consecrated hosts upon the paten and turned towards 
his comrades. They made the general confession and then 
each in turn read a similar oath and communed. At the 
end, after prayer before the great altar, they each in turn 
embraced Ignatius and gave him the kiss of peace “‘not 
without great devotion, feeling and tears.” 

The Company of Jesus was organized and equipped for 
its service to the world. 


CHAPTER X 
THE CONSTITUTIONS 


Although the Company had a leader and a commission 
from the visible head of the Church it had no detailed 
constitution. The filling out of the first summary sketch 
laid before the Pope and confirmed in general by his bull, 
was a task for which the fathers had no time. So they left 
it to Ignatius and Codure. Codure died within a year * and 
Ignatius was at first too busy governing the Company to 
write rules for its government. But after the lapse of six 
years (1547), he began to formulate his experience and in 
three years he had finished the Constitutions. He then ob- 
tained the opinions of some of the older fathers who were 
easily accessible and spent two years revising the text. 
He then sent it to all the establishments of the Company 
and it became law as if it had been formally voted by a 
general congregation, which was not done until two years 
after his death.? It was not however regarded as finished. 
He continued to revise its language and it is the clearest 
and, from a literary point of view, the best of his writings. 

The extreme importance he gave to the document may 
be measured by its last words “‘and finally let all set them- 
selves to keep the constitutions—for which end it is neces- 
sary to know them: at least for each one to know those 
which relate to himself and so they are to be read or heard 
read every month.” 

The Constitutions are preceded by the “‘first and gen- 


* 
* Ribadeneira, folio 80. * Preface to de la Torres IX ff. Astrain, 137. 
146 


THE CONSTITUTIONS 147 


eral examination which must be proposed to all who ask to 
be admitted to the Company of Jesus.” 

Then follow the Constitutions themselves with declara- 
tions ; a sort of running comment declared to be of equal 
authority. A short preface says they will be complete, 
clear and brief and divided into ten parts. 

The first part is on Admitting to Probation. The 
power to do this resides in the general and in those to 
whom he grants it. No one is to examine for admittance 
any friend or relative. 

Those who have natural gifts and experience are the 
best fitted. But temporal coadjutors may be received if 
they have “a good conscience, are quiet, tractable, lovers 
of virtue, inclined to devotion and content in the Company 
with the lot of Martha. People not useful to the Com- 
pany ought not to be received simply because it would do 
them good. Those admitted to probation ought to have 
passed fourteen years of age and those allowed to take a 
professed oath ought to have passed twenty five.” 

There are certain impediments which absolutely bar 
consideration as a possible novice. ‘These may be ar- 
ranged under headings * Orthodoxy—To have denied the 
faith among infidels, to have been condemned by public 
sentence for heresy or to have been separated from the 
Church as a schismatic. Crime—To have committed 
enormous sins like homicide. Monk—To have worn a 
monastic habit in a convent or hermitage. Social—To 
have a wife or to be aslave. Health—To be insane or to 
show a tendency towards it. 

Other impediments not necessarily absolute are strong 
passions and inveterate bad habits, suspicion of worldly 
motives, an inconstant character, indiscreet devotions 
leading to illusions and important errors, lack of education 
or brains or memory (except for temporal coadjutors), no- 


*The headings are the writer’s. 


148 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


table lack of judgment or obstinacy, age too tender or too 
advanced, debts and social obligations. 

There are two probations. The first, when the postu- 
lants are treated in a way as guests, lasts from twelve to 
twenty days; or longer if the superior thinks best. Dur- 
ing this time the probationer is to occupy a room apart and 
he is to be very carefully examined. If he is found not 
fitted, he is to be helped to serve God some other way. 
If he seems to be fitted he is to be transferred to the com- 
mon house and admitted to the second probation which 
lasts two years. : 

The second part concerns Dismissals. Members of any 
grade in the Company may be dismissed if their retention 
is an injury to it and to God’s service. The power to dis- 
miss rests in the general congregation of the entire Com- 
pany and in the general who may communicate it to the 
provincials, to heads of houses or rectors of colleges. In 
the case of the higher grades no one may be dismissed 
without the concurrence of the general. 

The causes of dismissal during the probation of two 
years are quite broad and might be summed up as any sort 
of unfitness for the work of the Company, ranging from 
ill health to vice. Dismissals should be made only after 
prayer, conversation with all whose knowledge of the facts 
might help to form a fair judgment, and the most careful 
deliberation. ‘The leaving should be arranged in such a 
way as to bring no shame on the dismissed and he should 
be helped to go away in charity toward the house and with 
the consolations of God in his heart. 

Those who leave the Company of their own accord 
should be allowed to go and no effort made to bring them 
back if they are thought to be not very well fitted for its 
service. In the case, however, of promising probationers, 
every effort should be made to persuade them to come 
back: especially if it is suspected that they left under some 
sudden strong temptation or were misled by others. All 


THE CONSTITUTIONS 149 


who leave or are dismissed should be willingly released 
from their first vow. 

The third part is on Probation. Both soul and body of 
the neophytes must be looked after. They are not to talk 
with any except those whom their superior indicates. Pro- 
bationers are not obliged to get rid of their property until 
the probation is over, unless ordered by their superior. 
This may not happen before the end of the first year. 
They are perfectly free to choose when to give their prop- 
erty. If anyone wishes to give his property, or a part of 
it, for the use of the Company, it is undoubtedly a proof 
of much greater perfection and abnegation of all self love, 
not to show any tenderness of affection for any one lo- 
cality, but to give it for general use according to the judg- 
ment of the general or provincial; consideration being 
given not to offend kings and civil authorities.* ‘The 
probationers must be instructed to guard themselves 
against the illusions of the devil during their devotions, 
to defend themselves against all temptations and to 
learn the means they can use to conquer them... 
It is well that all in the house should practise preaching 
within it.”” This exercise might occupy about an hour after 
dinner, to practise the use of the voice, the method of 
presenting a topic, etc. Subjects suggested are the vir- 
tues; especially self denial and brotherly love. Directions 
are given for the care of the body and the declarations go 
into some minute details prescribing a rest hour after eat- 
- ing, between six and seven hours of sleep, a careful watch 
over the aged or those in weak health, etc. 

The fourth part treats of “Instruction in Letters and 
in other Means of helping their Neighbours” to be given to 
those who stay in the Company. It is very much the long- 
est part of the Constitutions and will be considered later 
in the chapter on the colleges of the Company. 

The fifth paré concerns Admission into the Company. 


-*The reason for this caution is that no ruler liked the export of gold. 


150 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Speaking in the broadest way, the Company consists of all 
who live under obedience to the general, including the nov- 
ices or probationers; speaking less broadly, it contains 
three grades; approved scholars, trained coadjutors and 
professed. Speaking more exactly it consists of the last 
two classes only. Those admitted as professed must have 
in addition to spiritual qualities, sufficient education. Be- 
sides humane letters and the liberal arts they must be 
trained in scholastic theology and the holy scriptures. 
The minimum term of study is four full years of theology 
after graduating in arts from a university. Postulants 
must also qualify by the successful defense before exam- 
iners of propositions in logic, philosophy and theology. 
Those found fitted, become professed by taking a vow 
similar to the one cited on page 145. The oath of coad- 
jutors leaves out the last clause on special obedience to 
papal orders for missions. The oath of approved scholars 
obliges only to poverty, chastity, obedience and to join the 
Company. It is made only to God and not to any man 
and consists largely of a prayer for divine help and 
guidance. 

In the sixth part the element of exhortation comes out 
very strongly. It concerns “ the Members of the Com- 
pany in their Relations to Themselves.” It discusses first 
the virtues of obedience and poverty. The Constitutions 
call poverty “the strong bulwark of a special religious pro- 
fession,” and all professed must make a solemn promise 
not to try to alter the Constitutions in regard to poverty. 
No house or church of the Company might have an income 
to which it possessed any legal rights, nor own real estate 
“outside of that which was necessary or very convenient 
for their habitation and use.” Colleges, as will be after- 
wards explained, must own property and have income. 
Houses of probationers might also have an income. ‘No 
one of the Company is allowed to persuade any person to 
give a perpetual alms to the houses or churches of the 


THE CONSTITUTIONS 151 


Company and if any persons give of their own accord, 
the Company cannot acquire any legal right which enables 
it to go to court about it.” “Let such things be given 
when charity inspires it for the service of God.”” No mem- 
ber of the Company can take any fee or present for saying 
mass, hearing confession, preaching, reading the scriptures 
or visiting the sick. ‘To avoid every sort of avarice’ no 
collection boxes may be in the Company’s churches. 

The third chapter of the sixth part discusses how a mem- 
ber of the Company may or may not occupy himself. He 
is not to take a parish church because he must always be 
free to go wherever a pope or his superior wishes to send 
him. He must avoid as much as possible all secular af- 
fairs. The fourth chapter treats briefly of how to aid 
the dying members of the Company. The last chapter 
explains that outside of the fourfold oath (poverty, chas- 
tity, obedience, and special obedience to the Pope) the fact 
that any rule of the Constitutions is broken is not in itself 
a sin unless it is commanded by the superior “in the name 
of Christ” or “in virtue of obedience”; which he may do if 
he thinks it best for the member or extremely advanta- 
geous to the Company. This is done in order that ‘in 
place of the fear of offending, there may rule the love and 
desire for complete perfection and the greater glory and 
praise of Christ our Creator and Lord.” 

The seventh part treats of the members “in relation 
to their neighbours” when they are scattered through the 
“vineyard of Christ Our Lord.” There are four ways of 
being distributed in “the vineyard of the Lord.” The first 
is when the members are sent on missions by His Holiness 
the Pope. Such a mission, either among believers or in- 
fidels must be obeyed without hesitation or excuse. 
There is a very strict prohibition against any one, directly 
or through others, trying to influence a pope or his min- 
isters to send him to one place rather than to another. 
If a pope wants one or several to go without naming them, 


152 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the superior is to pick the men. “When a pope makes 
choice of some one for a mission and it is judged, that if 
the Vicar of Christ had been well informed, he would not 
send that man on that mission, the general may give more 
information about the man chosen; but everything must 
be finally left to the judgment of His Holiness.” The 
second sort of work is a mission on which a man is sent 
by his superior in the Company. When possible, it is best 
not to send one man, but at least two. “The beginners 
should be paired with the more experienced and the fer- 
vent and spirited with the more circumspect and prudent, 
in such a way that the difference united in the bond of 
charity may help both.” . . . ‘Because good when it is 
universal is more divine, those persons should be chosen 
as objects of work who if they are helped will be centers 
for extending good to many others who follow their au- 
thority or are governed by them. Also spiritual aid which 
is given to persons of great public influence, whether they 
are prelates, or princes or lords or magistrates or judges 
or distinguished scholars, ought to be considered as more 
important: for the same reason the chance to give spirit- 
ual aid to large nations like the Indies, or to chief cities 
or to universities where many people are wont to be 
gathered together of the sort who, if aided themselves, 
may become workers to help others, ought to be preferred.” 

The members of the Company living in houses or col- 
leges although they have a fixed residence and many duties, 
can still aid their neighbours in many ways; by good ex- 
ample, prayer, the celebration of mass and other divine 
worship, hearing confessions, preaching, reading the scrip- 
tures in the church of the Company, in other churches or 
in public squares, pious conversations, good counsel, works 
of pity for bodily troubles, especially visiting hospitals, in 
healing quarrels, helping the poor and the prisoners in 
jails. Those who have a talent for writing should use it, 


THE CONSTITUTIONS 153 


but not publish anything until the general has had it ex- 
amined to see if its printing would be for edification. 

The eighth part treats of Aids in Uniting the members 
with their head and with each other. Unity is necessary 
to accomplish the objects of the Company, but difficult be- 
cause its members will be scattered over the world. A 
great crowd of persons should not be received as pro- 
fessed, nor should any be advanced or accepted even as 
trained coadjutors or approved scholars except picked 
men; because “a great multitude of persons whose faults 
have not been well subdued by self discipline, does not 
bear order let alone union.” That union in Christ so neces- 
sary to the work of the Company, is in large part secured 
by the bond of obedience. Therefore “Whoever is seen to 
be the cause of division among those who dwell together 

. ought to be separated from that congregation like a 
pestilence which can spread its contagion if a remedy is 
not at once applied.”” The general should for most of the 
time live in Rome whence communication is easy with all 
parts, and the heads of provinces should stay chiefly in cen- 
tral positions in easy communication with Rome. ‘The 
chief bond for the union of the members with each other 
and their head is the love of God... . The principal 
enemy of that union is self love which can be combatted 
by charity and by every goodness and virtue and also by 
contempt for temporal things. . . . The sending of letters 
missive, by which, through the efforts of the provincials 
and the general, news of the entire Company reaches 
every part of it, is a very especial aid for consolation and 
mutual edification in Our Lord.” 

Several chapters treat of the general congregation. For 
the present it is not convenient that this should meet at 
fixed periods, but only to elect a new general or to treat 
matters of great importance. It is to meet usually in 
Rome. Its members are to be professed and they are 


154 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


normally chosen in provincial assemblies by a majority 
vote—the provincial having two votes. 

There are detailed rules for the election of a general. 
If any member hears of electioneering he is to report it 
at once and the offender shall never sit in another congre- 
gation. On the day of election the members of the con- 
gregation are shut up and they cannot go out or have 
any food but bread and water until the election is over. 
Voting is by written ballot without nomination or dis- 
cussion and a majority of all ballots cast is necessary to 
elect. If there is no majority, either three or five elec- 
tors shall be chosen and they, by a majority vote, shall 
elect a general. 

The ninth part treats at length of the General, and 
the first chapter briefly explains why he should be elected 
for life. 

The first quality desirable in a general is that he should 
“be closely united to God and very familiar with the use 
of prayer.” Second, he must be one “whose example in 
all the virtues will help those in the Company. Especially 
must he shine with the light of charity to all his neigh- 
bours and particularly to those of the Company and that 
true humility which will make him beloved by God and 
men.” He should possess magnanimity and strength of 
mind and never be dismayed by the opposition of power- 
ful people “being always entirely ready to suffer death if 
it is necessary for the good of the Company in the service 
of Jesus Christ.” 

He ought to be of good understanding and judgment, be 
cautious, enterprizing and tenacious, have suitable health, 
appearance and age and be of fair fame outside the Com- 
pany. “And if some of the qualities mentioned are lack- 
ing in him, at least there must not be lacking great good- 
ness and love for the Company and good judgment accom- 
panied by a good education.” 

The authority of a general is great. He can receive 


THE CONSTITUTIONS hos 


members into all grades. He appoints and revokes rec- 
tors and masters of colleges. He has power to conclude all 
business contracts, but he cannot sell or disband a house 
or a college without the consent of the general congrega- 
tion. It is his duty to see that the Constitutions are kept 
everywhere and he has power to grant dispensations from 
their rules “according as the Eternal Light may direct 
him.” He calls the general congregations and orders the 
assemblies of the provincial congregations. A chapter 
treats of the authority the Company has over its general 
and the care it should take of him. He should not be al- 
lowed to work too hard or be unduly harsh towards him- 
self. In case of faults, the Company should warn him with 
due humility through his confessor. He cannot accept any 
Church dignity without the consent of the Company, 
which will never be given unless the direct command of 
the Pope compels it. (11) 

If a general is careless or remiss by reason of illness or 
age, a coadjutor may be appointed by the provincials 
with the written assent of the rectors of the colleges. ‘“‘In 
some cases (which it is hoped in the divine goodness will 
never occur) as for example actual mortal sin, such as 
licentiousness, wounding, peculation or heresy,” the Com- 
pany can and should depose a general and if necesary ex- 
pel him from the Company. 

The fifth chapter provides four assistants elected by 
the congregation and describes the machinery for assem- 
_ bling a council to depose a general. 

The sixth chapter emphasizes the need of good superior 
officers under the general, provides for yearly complete 
statistics of every part of the Company for his informa- 
tion, warns him against a too particular attention to de- 
tails, recommends him to have a special secretary to serve 
‘fas memory and hands” and to assign certain sorts of 
things under his care to men expert in them. It also pro- 
vides for a procurator general who is not to be one of the 


156 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


professed. His duty is to handle the property of the col- 
leges and to defend it when needful. Such an officer was 
necessary for the members were forbidden to mix in any 
secular business. Nor could they enter a law court as a 
witness without express permission of the general, who 
was not to give it except where the Catholic religion was 
concerned, or where their testimony could not do harm 
to anyone. The superior is expressly forbidden to allow 
a member to give hurtful testimony in any criminal case 
or to help a conviction which would bring infamy on the 
accused. “For it is the part of Our Company to serve all 
men in the Lord anh so far as possible, without an in- 
jury to any one.’ 

The style of the Constitutions is sometimes so artless 
as to appear naive’ and the arrangement is not logical. 
But they have a power which is their own. They are not 
so much what we call a constitution as a description of 
what the Company ought to be: the definition of its 
different organs and their relations to each other comes 
in, so to speak, on the side. Ignatius does not over-em- 
phasize machinery but sometimes seems almost to over- 
look it. He begins, not by a description of the work of his 
Company or its organization, but by a list of the sorts of 
men who ought not to be taken into it and an elaborate 
description of the sort of men who ought to be welcomed 
to its ranks. His view of the order is personal and not at 
all mechanical. Men must make it and not formulas. He 
saw its unity not simply as a similarity of regulations but 
chiefly as a unity of spirit. He evidently did not look on 
the rules as iron clad. He provided especially for excep- 
tions and the exceptions he names are manifestly to keep 
the spirit at the expense of the letter. All through these 
laboriously wrought-out rules for the guidance of an intri- 
cate enterprize for doing good to his fellows, there shines 


°The editor of the standard edition agrees “Habent enim verba Sancti 
Patris Nostri, licet simplicia atque interdum rudia, miram vim prcpHete- 
temque.” De la Torre; Preface VII. 


THE CONSTITUTIONS 157 


a simple sincerity at times very touching and an unshak- 
able trust in God. This man wishes his followers to be 
pure in heart, poor in spirit, merciful, to hunger and thirst 
after righteousness, to strive always to make peace. He 
is quite sure that men of this sort will carry the Company 
to great triumphs for God, the Church and man. 


CHAPTER XI 
THE NEED OF THE TIMES 


Just as the Spiritual Exercises incorporate the experi- 
ence of Ignatius before he founded the Company, so the 
Constitutions incorporate his experience as general of 
the Company. The work which he finally set before it 
is quite different from the vague purpose which had 
been in his own mind ever since his conversion: the — 
idea of living in Palestine to stimulate his own soul by 
the memories of Christ and to help his neighbour both 
infidel and Christian. This purpose he communicated to 
the comrades who gathered round him in Paris and they 
recorded their enthusiasm for it in the vow which each 
one made for himself at Montmartre. This was their only 
intention when they met at Venice; they were to ask the 
Pope for work merely in case this plan failed. The forced 
abandonment of this long cherished plan of going to Pales- 
tine and the changing of the voluntary association of 
friends into a perpetual religious order, seems to have been 
accepted by Ignatius without any reluctance or disappoint- 
ment. He had grown used to seeing in the closing of old 
roads and the opening of new, the hand of God directing 
his course and, besides that, his year of waiting in Italy 
had made him aware of the terrible need of work over the 
entire field. A deep seated wide-spread and very acute 
corruption had for many years afflicted the Church. Every- 
where throughout Christendom “the hungry sheep looked 
up and were not fed.” Ignatius never talked about this. 
Later he very explicitly warned his followers not to de- 
nounce the corruptions of the Church but to work posi- 

158 


THE NEED OF THE TIMES 159 


tively to remedy them. Nevertheless, what he saw and 
what he heard made him aware of the facts and he realized 
that now, perhaps as never before, the Vicar of Christ 
needed faithful servants. He saw the Church beset by 
foes within and without and his answer was to raise and 
equip the Company of Jesus for her defense. 

Let us glance at the situation when Ignatius sent his 
followers out to work. All zealous contemporary church- 
men admitted that there were gross and palpable cor- 
ruptions in the Church. None of them in non-controversial 
moments could have been disposed to deny the truth 
of what Erasmus wrote to a friend in 1521, the year when 
Ignatius was converted. ‘The corruption of the Church, 
the degeneracy of the Holy See are universally admitted. 
Reform has been loudly asked for and I doubt whether 
in the whole history of Christianity the heads of the 
Church have been so grossly worldly as the present mo- 
ment.”* This corruption seems to have been due pri- 
marily to worldliness rather than to the flesh and the 
devil: though the latter pair had gotten entrance because 
the gate was opened by the first. At all events Pope 
Adrian VI who died in 1522 worn out by the herculean task 
of cleansing, sent a nuncio to Germany with written in- 
structions about “‘certain things you can say viva voce to 
the prelates, princes and representatives of the cities in 
Germany when you deem the opportunity fitting” .. . 
After full instructions about the heresy of Luther and 
what ought to be done about it, the instruction con- 
tinues “Item: you are to say we openly confess that. 
God permits this persecution of His Church because 
of the sins of men especially the sins of priests and 


prelates of the Church. . . . The Scriptures cry aloud 
that the sins of the people have their roots in the sins of 
the priests . . . These were deplorable things in the times 


of Alexander VI. And it is no wonder that the disease has 
Froude, Erasmus, 284, ctd. Opera, Leyden 1702, d1XXII. 


160 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


descended from the head to the members, from the chief 
priests to other lower prelates. All of us prelates and ec- 
clesiastics have turned aside each to his own way and for 
a long time there has not been one who worked right- 
eousness, no not one, wherefore it is needful that we all 
give glory to God and humiliate our souls before Him.” ? 

Although Ignatius himself was not in the habit of talk- 
ing or writing about the corruptions of the Church, we 
may infer that he agreed with Pope Adrian about the 
cause of the schisms of the North from the text of a speech 
written six years after the death of Ignatius by his inti- 
mate co-worker Lainez who succeeded him as general of 
the Company. “The corruption of the little of Christen- 
dom left demands penitence and emendation. This must 
begin with the clergy and among the clergy with the 
Supreme Head and his court, whose bad example and bad 
use of the power he has from God is the principal cause 
of the disorders among the members of the Church. How 
great is the need of such a reformation can be judged 
by the universal scandal and the hatred among some, the 
contempt among others, of the Holy See because of the 
abuses in it. In our day we have seen Germany, Scot- 
land, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Prussia break away 
and there is very probable danger that the Kingdom of 
Poland and the States of Flanders and France will follow. 
Nor is there any security for those which remain, Spain 
and Italy, because they are scandalized by the abuses 
of their Head. . . . The abuses which cause this scandal 
are first to see the Popes not expecting to do anything 
in the Papacy except to make great their relatives ac- 
cording to the flesh, and for this reason conceding to 
princes wrong things and putting unfit men into the col- 
- lege of cardinals.” etc. etc.® 
Here is an extract from a sermon preached at Rome be- 
4 Raynaldus, Vol. XII (31) p. 395. 8 Mon. Lainii, VIII, 800. 


THE NEED OF THE TIMES 161 


fore the Council of the Lateran seven years before the 
conversion of Ignatius. ‘If we examine the writings of 
the fathers and the canons of the Church, do we not find 
that they tell us to suspend or to depose from priestly 
orders every flattering and impious priest, every betrayer 
of his neighbour, every evil speaker, or those who slyly 
lead their brethren into wickedness, every seditious troub- 
ler of peace, the ambitious who sacrilegiously usurp sacred 
dignities, the envious, the adulterous, the villainous per- 
petrators of other obscenities, those who are given to 
cruelty and at the same time revengeful of their own in- 
juries, gamblers, accursed searchers for filthy lucre? ‘Do 
we not, I say, find that inviolable decrees of ancient canons 
tell us to suspend or depose this sort of priest? But I ask 
you, if the benignity of Mother Church did not relax the 
severity of ancient canons how could such priests exist as 
they do?” * 

The Admonition read about thirty years later to the 
Council of Trent said: ‘‘We pastors ought to confess our- 
selves guilty before the tribunal of God’s mercy and take 
upon ourselves the sins of all because in large part we are 
the cause of these evils. . . . The prophet Ezekiel de- 
scribes the living image not only of his own times but of 
ours when he says, speaking in the name of God: “The 
priests have despised my law and polluted my sanctuaries 
and have made no distinction between things sacred and 
things profane.’ ”° 

Here are some of the phrases from the sermon preached 
before the same Council by the Bishop of St. Marks. 
“Look at Rome, France, Spain and you will find no social 
class, no sex, no age which is not stained, corrupt, putrid. 
The heathen of Africa and Scythia do not live more im- 
purely and wickedly ... Oh we pastors who ought to shine 
more clearly than the sun, we are murdering the 

“Mansi, vol. 32, p. 895. ® Ehses. I, 549. 


162 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


sheep of the Lord’s flock by our example . . . The Apos- 
tles and fathers rejoiced in poverty and fled from wealth. 
We say they were insane. We long eagerly for gold— 
for gold we turn even to poison and the dagger and we do 
not hesitate to pillage anything sacred or profane... 
They lived chastely. Our throats burn with the flames 
of all vices.” ® 

The very year that Ignatius arrived in Rome (1538) a 
remarkable pamphlet had appeared. It was the unani- 
mous report of a commission of nine appointed by the 
Pope to make recommendations to him about the reform 
of the Church. Naturally it was intended to be a confi- | 
dential document but by negligence or treachery it got in- 
to the hands of public printers and spread over the world.‘ 
How outspoken it was may be judged from some of the 
following summary paraphrases. It says that the begin- 
ning of the disastrous conditions of the Church came from 
the fact that ‘‘some popes thy predecessors with prurient 
ears assembled doctors of theology not in order to learn 
from them what they ought to do, but so that they might 
by cleverness discover reasons for doing what they wanted 
to do. So doctors were found who said the Pope was the 
absolute lord of all benefices and therefore, since the lord 
could sell what was his, it was impossible for the Pope 
to commit simony.® 

“From this source, most Holy Father there have burst 
out upon the church of God the many abuses by which we 
behold her so terribly afflicted as almost to destroy the 
hope of saving her. 

“The first abuse is the ordination of the clergy and espe- 
cially of parish priests to which no attention is given nor 
is any care exercised in choosing them. Hence arise in- 
numerable scandals, the priesthood is despised, and rev- 


°Ehses, IV, pg. 557-559. “Pastor, V, pg. 126. *°Simony was buying and 
selling church offices which implied the gift of the Holy Ghost. 


THE NEED OF THE TIMES 163 


erence for Church services is not merely diminished but 
even almost extinguished. 

“Another evil is the distribution of church benefices 
(bishoprics, etc.) which are given for personal reasons and 
not for the good of the flock of Christ. Especially Italians 
ought not to be given benefices in Spain or England, nor 
Spaniards, nor Englishmen given benefices in Italy ... 
The law of the Church, says the sons of priests may not 
have their fathers’ benefices. But dispensations are 
granted suspending this most holy law. Nothing has done 
so much to cause that hatred of the clergy from which 
so many seditions have arisen. ... Another great and in- 
tolerable abuse is the system which has grown up to pre- 
vent the bishops from punishing criminal clergymen. For 
wicked clergymen flee to the papal penitentiary officer 
from whom they find ways to escape punishment: and 
what is worse by the use of money. This scandal Holy 
Father disturbs Christian people in a way no words can 
describe. If equal scandals existed in any merely human 
state, it would very soon fall—by no means could it long 
survive. 

‘Another abuse which must be corrected is in the relig- 
ious orders because many are so corrupted that they are 
become a great scandal to those living outside of them in 
the world and they do the greatest harm by their example. 
We think that all the conventual orders ought to be abol- 
ished: not however in such a way as to do an injustice to 
anyone, but by forbidding the admission of novices. In 
this way without any injury they could be quickly wiped 
out and good monks put in their place. .. . Another abuse 
which troubles pious people is the habit of putting con- 
vents under the care of monasteries; whence arises in 
many monasteries sacrilege, to the great scandal of the 
people. A great and pernicious abuse is that in schools, 
especially in Italy, many professors of philosopy teach im- 


164 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


piety. Bishops should see to it that professors do not 
teach impiety to youth.’’® 

Ignatius must have heard of this report and it is no- 
ticeable that two of its points, the danger of anti-Christian 
teaching in schools and the danger of monks taking per- 
manent religious direction of convents, attracted his at- 
tention. He met one danger by his system of colleges and 
he avoided the other by getting exemption from the Pope 
against commands to do it. 

These judgments on the condition of the clergy were 
confirmed by his own experience. Thirteen years after 
the foundation of the Company its missioners wrote from 
Corsica that the greater part of the inhabitants of the 
island had been led into idolatry because their priests, 
ignorant of the proper formula of consecration of the blood 
and wine in the mass, were unable to perform the miracle 
of transubstantiation. In consequence, when the people 
adored the elevated host they were not adoring as they 
supposed the true body of Christ but were guilty of idola- 
try. With a priesthood so careless in regard to the funda- 
mental mystery of their calling, it is little wonder that the 
missioners found “the greatest ignorance of God, abun- 
dant superstitions, innumerable quarrels, inveterate ha- 
treds, murders committed in every direction, pride and lust 
plainly to be seen everywhere .. . Some are very credulous 
and accept secret heresies. Many of them do not even 
know how to sign themselves with the cross or to say the 
Pater Noster or the Ave Maria.”*° .. . “There are six 
bishoprics on the island but none of the bishops is now 
living in Corsica and so the sheep are scattered and aban- 
doned to the ravening wolves.”™* 

An ignorance somewhat less deep was widespread in 
other parts of Italy. Preaching by parish priests was 
extremely rare. They did not know enough to preach and 


_ ® Mansi, Sup. 5 p. 539-47. Vol. 35. ™ Pol. III 86. “Pol. III 88. 


THE NEED OF THE TIMES 165 


left it to monks sent out from the cloisters. The clergy 
openly broke their vow of chastity and kept concubines. 
The brother of Ignatius, priest in Azpeitia, made no con- 
cealment of the fact that he had illegitimate children and 
the case was so common as to excite no remark. Ignatius 
tells how in Azpeitia it was the custom for unmarried 
girls to wear nothing over their heads. They “covered 
their heads” when they were married. But he says,” 
“There were many who became concubines of priests 
and other men and are faithful to them as if they 
were their wives. And this has become so common that 
the concubines have no shame in saying ‘I have cov- 
ered my head for so and so,’ and so are known to every- 
body as mistresses.” Ignatius tells how he persuaded the 
governor to make a law that “all who cover their heads for 
anyone without being their wives should be punished.” 
This violation of their ordination vow, regarded by most 
people as venial, was one of the least of the sins that could 
be found among the clergy in some places. In Lombardy 
for instance a popular proverb said: “If you want to go to 
hell, become a priest.” ** 

To consult some of the learned and _ historically 
minded Roman Catholic scholars who are in recent times 
doing so much to lift the history and biography of the 
sixteenth century out of the sentimental fog caused by 
“edifying” books, or the black bitter mud of controversy, 
is to find in their pages a mass of equally decisive and 
unprejudiced testimony to the same effect. 

A book written in the beginning of the 16th century 
and dedicated to the short lived pope Julius III, did not 
scruple to give the plainest expression to these charges of 
vice and irreligion among monks and priests. It was en- 
titled the “Anatomy of Vice.” Its author asks rhetori- 
cally “How many of you priests keep concubines and are 

4 Scripta, I, p. 90. Cited Venturi, I, 34. 


' 166 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


simoniacs full of worldly ambitions? How many of you 
carry arms as if you were soldiers? How many come to the 
altar of Christ with bastard sons by your side How 
many celebrate mass with the poison of hate in your heart? 
How many of you loan money at usury and trade in cattle 
and horses? How many of you sell the rites of burial, the 
tolling of the bell, the carrying of the cross? How many 
are unbridled liars? In whom among you can be found 
charity, patience, modesty, humility, faith and other vir- 
tues which become a priest?” 

Of course there was another side to the picture. The 
missioners of the Company of Jesus sent to Rome nearly 
two thousand letters during Ignatius’ generalship and they 
write of many faithful priests. But the condition of the 
parish clergy in Italy as a whole was deplorable. A visitor 
to Naples wrote ‘‘the ignorance of the priests here is so 
great no one could believe it unless he had seen it. Eight 
out of ten priests ought to be degraded from their of- 
fice.”’ 15 

The bishops, who were supposed to be the pastors of 
the pastors, responsible for the character of the parish 
clergy, were, in large numbers, indifferent to their duty 
and incapable of reforming their dioceses. “In the first 
half of the sixteenth century, really excellent bishops were 
rare and exceptional, mediocrities predominated and bad 
ones, even heretics, were not wanting.” ** In consequence 
a Florentine could write just before Ignatius’ death “a 
great part of the cities of Italy appear to be infected with 
heresy.” * 

How should it be otherwise when so little attention was 
paid to the real purpose for which church offices were 
given. Caraffa wrote to Clement VII, “There are many 
boys and some soldiers who hold at least three parish 


“ Cited Venturi I, 36. “Cited Venturi, I, 28. ™ Venturi, I, 348. ™ Cited 
Venturi, I, 346. 


THE NEED OF THE TIMES 167 


churches each and to save money they appoint as curates 
monks who have left their monasteries.’"* Many appoint- 
ments to bishoprics were evidently made for personal rea- 
sons. There were more than 260 bishoprics in Conti- 
nental Italy many of them with great incomes. A large 
number of them had become almost infeudated to noble 
Italian houses and the lists of incumbents of the richest 
sees show plainly that they were practically family pos- 
sessions.” ‘The succession to the bishoprics of Italy was 
one of the privileges of the nobility of Italy almost as 
in Germany; where all the leading bishops were nobles, 
and had for the most part become prince bishops, inde- 
pendent civil rulers, members ex-officio of the Reichstag 
or national assembly. If this had not taken place in 
Italy, it was because the civil princes would not suffer it, 
preferring to hold the bishoprics as appanages of their 
houses; and also because the Pope had become a great 
potentate who frequently put armies into the field. A 
Catholic writer after a careful survey of the situation 
sums up his conclusions as follows, ‘The condition of 
religion in Italy in the middle of the sixteenth century 
was in the highest degree wretched. The clergy in all 
its grades afflicted, in some parts more, in others less, by 
inveterate evils very hard to cure: the people left at the 
mercy of their two domestic enemies, ignorance and 
license.”’”° 

Astrain says: ‘‘Although it is extremely difficult to 
establish with certainty a comparative judgment between 
different nations, I do not think it too bold to assert that, 
at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Spain was in a 
condition less evil than any other country of Europe .. . 
Let us say less evil in order to defend ourselves against 
the opinion of some modern Catholics who have created 
for themselves an idea of the Spain of that age entirely 


* Cited Venturi, I, 47. 7° Venturi, I, 162. *° Venturi, I, 398. 


168 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


too optimistic; indeed as fantastic and false as the idea 
Don Quixote had of the centuries of chivalry. . . 

“Catholics and Protestants have agreed in writing the 
history of the sixteenth century as it is said Apelles painted 
the portrait of his one-eyed friend—in profile. But with 
this difference that we Catholics present it from the side 
of the good eye, and the Protestants show it on the side of 
the blind eye. So long as history is written in that partial 
way, it will be impossible for us to understand each other. 
... It is necessary to examine the beautiful and the ugly, 
the good and the evil. ... What was in that century the 
ugly side of our Spanish nation? The frightful corrup- 
tion of manners. What was the beautiful side? Fixity — 
of mind in the faith, and steadfastness of character.” 

The condition of Spain in the first half of the sixteenth 
century though not so corrupt as the condition of most 
of Europe, was none the less deplorable. The scandals 
among the clergy began at the top; as for instance an arch- 
bishop of Toledo primate of Spain had three illegitimate 
sons from two mothers. The famous Bishop of Zamorra 
rode at the head of three hundred armed clergymen of his 
diocese in the civil wars, assassinated prisoners and after 
many adventures was hanged in the year of Loyola’s con- 
version. Ten years after Loyola’s death, a Venetian Am- 
bassador could write from Spain “The greater number of 
these prelates live with great pomp and luxury. Very 
few of them are without illegitimate children whom they 
publicly own without any pretext.” 

Many bishops cared nothing for their dioceses except 
to collect their incomes which they spent at court or at 
Rome. Five foreign cardinals held in succession the bi- 
shopric of Pamplona. No one of the five lived in it and 
“the first, Caesar Borgia, lived in such a way that the best 
thing he could do for his diocese was to keep away from it.”’ 
The enormous riches of some dioceses tended to increase 

* Astrain, I, LXXII. 


THE NEED OF THE TIMES 169 


the number of worldly or vicious clergymen. The single 
diocese of Calahorra had eighteen thousand clergymen; 
“the greater part of them doing nothing.” “The national 
vice of laziness which so disastrously corrupts modern 
Spain,” brought swarms of applicants around the organ- 
zation of the Church like flies around a pot of honey. This 
weak clergy was unable to do much to stop the violence of 
Spanish life, which converted some of the provinces ‘‘into 
theatres of atrocious crimes or turned them into lakes of 
blood.” . . . “Knife thrusts and arquebus balls from be- 
hind, razing of houses, tearing up the growing crops, as- 
saults on fortresses, raids into cities, arson and tumult” 
these were common enough. 

Of this need for reform in Spain Ignatius was aware. 
You cannot indeed find in him any signs of patriotism in 
the sense of a stronger affection for one country than for 
another; that was swallowed up in a greater passion for 
God and His Church, even as his love of family disap- 
peared in love for the Company of Jesus. But, after all, 
to feel that part of his work must lie not at the eastern end 
of the Mediterranean but at its western end where the 
only language he used easily was spoken, could not have 
brought to him any impulse of disappointment to be mas- 
tered. 

If we look across the Alps and the Pyrenees we do not 
find the outlook at the time of the foundation of the Com- 
pany of Jesus more encouraging for the Church. The king- 
dom of England had followed its king into open schism and 
the Pope had replied by a bull deposing Henry and call- 
ing upon all Catholic princes to drive him from the throne. 

Some years before, Denmark, Norway and Sweden had 
broken from the authority of the Papacy and firmly es- 
tablished in national churches the doctrines of Luther. 
The majority of the thirteen cantons of Switzerland had 
followed Zwingli in a revolt against the Church. Most of 


2 Astrain. Preface. 


170 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the states of the German Empire were Protestant, and the 
influence of the Church even in the nominally Catholic 
states of Germany was extremely weak. Ignatius wrote, 
just before his death, to the leader of his missioners to 
Germany ‘Pastors, no matter how orthodox Catholic they 
may be in doctrine, who, by great ignorance and by their 
evil examples injure the people, should be most severely 
punished and deprived of the income of their benefices by 
their bishops. It is better for a flock to be without a pastor 
than to have a wolf for a shepherd. The ignorance and 
evil life of such priests brought the pestilence of heresy 
upon Germany.” ** The heir apparent elect of the Em- 
pire, Ferdinand, Duke of Austria ‘seemed to have per- 
suaded himself that much help for religion was to be ex- 
pected from our Company in the miserable condition of 
those regions, although humanly speaking there was no 
great hope of doing much because obedience to the Apos- 
tolic Roman See was not simply lost, it was turned into a 
sort of deadly hatred. Nor is it easy to believe how much 
the Sacraments and other sacred things are despised.” * 
In consequence of this state of affairs, the early missioners, 
who had a little of their travelling money left when they 
arrived in Vienna, were able to make a very advantageous 
purchase of books because ‘“‘Thomas Aquinas, Bonaven- 
tura and other scholastic fathers were going begging and 
were bought as they were about to be sold to pharmacists 
for wrapping paper.” * They were also able to obtain 
with very slight expense a building for their college be- 
cause ‘“There were extremely few monks and the monas- 
teries were everywhere vacant since the monastic calling 
had fallen into the deepest contempt and scarcely anyone 
could be found who wished to become a monk.” *° 
Perhaps the most sinister thing for the future influence 


* Letts, VII, 400. ™ Pol. ITI, 248. * Pol. Il, 275. ™ Poly Tit, 248 ana aoa, 
Comp. IV, 234. 


THE NEED OF THE TIMES 171 


of the church in the parts of Germany still nominally ortho- 
dox was that “when the King wished to confer bishoprics 
and high ecclesiastical offices on fit and chosen men, no 
one of this sort could be found. The parishes either lacked 
pastors or were occupied by apostates and infamous per- 
sons. Young men did not aspire to the priesthood and it 
was said (in 1554) that, in twenty years, not twenty 
priests had graduated from the University of Vienna.” 

‘“‘A missioner in Belgium just before the death of Igna- 
tius found himself obliged to attack in the pulpit lust, ava- 
rice, gluttony and drunkenness because these vices were 
widespread as much among the clergy as among the laity. 
Many pastors kept concubines in their houses and some 
had to be carried home drunk every day, others held six 
or seven incompatible salaried church offices. These vices 
were the cause of heresy.” ** 

The prospects for the Church in the north were dark. 
Besides the ancient provinces in open schism the states 
which remained ostensibly in the papal obedience South 
Germany, Scotland, France, Poland, the Netherlands were 
as the orthodox said, badly infected by heresy. 

It was precisely this discouraging prospect which 
brought the long demanded and prayed for reform of 
which Ignatius Loyola was to be the most outstanding 
figure. For what Martin Luther was to the progressive 
series of schisms of the various national churches of the 
north that Ignatius Loyola was to the revival of the an- 
cient orthodox Church. If that internal reform had come 
earlier, it is possible that the national Protestant schisms 
might not have taken place. If it had not come at all, 
it seems probable that the ancient Church would have 
perished of her own internal diseases. That internal re- 
form came when it did, seems to have been due to the 
awakening shock of the sweeping success of the northern 

27 Pol. IV, 240. *® Pol. IV, 302. 


172 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


schisms. When magistrates and peoples were not burning 
heretics and schismatics, but hailing them as heaven sent 
leaders and when their books were being smuggled into 
the very strongholds of the authority and faith of the 
Church, then the words of faithful men like those cited 
denouncing the judgment of God upon sinners in high 
places, began to find not a formal but a real hearing. 

Venturi says, ‘For a hundred years people in Rome 
had been talking about corruption and reform but re- 
form never came. . . . The immensity of the danger, the 
imperious need of saving the faith and reviving piety were 
only clear and vivid when in the pontificate of Clement | 
VII (1523-1534) and Paul III (1534-1550) Italy saw 
itself the target for the attacks of the innovators, who 
looked forward to a quick and easy conquest.” ™ 

The orthodox Catholic reform began with Paul III. 
Before that “the true reform of the Church had not ad- 
vanced a step. It could not be said that it had even 
seriously begun.” *” Pastor says of Paul III, “The pro- 
fane interests which since Sixtus IV (1471) had with the 
Popes of the Renascence, decidedly outweighed all others, 
were still, indeed, very strong with him; but they no 
longer seemed of the greatest importance. . . . With his 
pontificate there began to dawn for the Church the hope- 
ful morning of a new era.” 

The condition of the papal court at his accession was 
not encouraging. Of the forty-three cardinals who elected 
him forty were the creations of Leo X and Clement VII 
and they were mostly true to the type which for more 
than two generations had been prevalent in the holy col- 
lege. They were representatives of illustrious families 
with huge incomes, young lords who had nothing of the 
clergyman about them except the name and the coat which 
they did not always wear. ‘They held bishoprics and 
abbacies (one young cardinal held twelve bishoprics) 

* Venturi, I, 349. * Venturi, I, p. 5. * Pastor, VI, p. 3. 


THE NEED OF THE TIMES 173 


which they regarded only as means to fill the purses they 
emptied by great trains of servants and gentlemen at- 
tendants rising to four hundred or by banquets, theaters, 
hunting, travelling and even war.*” 

There were in the college very few scholars distin- 
guished in the sacred sciences or men conspicuous for 
their lack of worldly luxury and many of the other sort. 
For example, young cardinal Ippolyto dei Medici 
cousin of Clement VII ‘wore a sword like a cavalier, 
spent a great part of his time fencing or riding—never 
put on his robes except when he went to convocation. 
He was more often seen at races or the theatre, than 
in his study or at church.”’** This was not astonishing in 
an age when a chronicler could write: ‘It was not con- 
sidered infamous for a pope to have bastard sons and to 
try by every means to make them rich and powerful.”* 
It is certain that the sister of the man who became Paul 
III, the beautiful Julia Farnese, had been the mistress 
of Pope Alexander VI.*° The Venetian Ambassador 
reports that it was common talk that Alessandro Farnese 
owed his promotion as cardinal to this fact and he was 
long called by an indecent nickname because of it.*’ For 
a number of years he had lived a very worldly life. A 
son was born to him after he had been a cardinal for 
ten years.** But, under the last three Popes, the dignity 
and ability with which he attended to the duties of his 
office had made him popular with the people of Rome. 
The old Adam of his earlier days as a prince of the 
Church among fellow cardinals who saw little difference 
between that princedom and any other, was not entirely 
dead in him. Within a week of his election to the Papacy, 
two of his grandsons fourteen and sixteen years old, 
were made cardinals and he continued to enrich his fam- 
ily. But, in spite of this, Paul III actually did more 


Von Reumont, III, 2 p. 275. 38 Venturi, I, 9. 
* Cited from Cardella by Venturi. * Segni, cited Venturi. 
Pastor, III, 301 n. 3. ™ Relazioni, Serie II, Vol. 3, p. 314. * Venturi. 


174 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


for the reform of the church than any of his predecessors 
for a hundred years. Perhaps the most fundamental 
thing he did was to make a better choice of cardinals. He 
created altogether seventy-one: almost all of worthy char- 
acter and most of them of distinguished ability. From 
the cardinals of his creation came his four immediate 
successors; all active in the reform of the Church. 

So Ignatius founded his Company of Jesus, at a time 
when a strong effort was being made by the Head of the 
Church to reform her crying abuses and vitalize her serv- 
ice to the world. 


CHAPTER XII 
THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 


The most complete summary statement of the work 
of the Company is found in the second bull of institu- 
tion issued ten years after the first by Pope Julius 
III in July 1550. “The company is founded to employ 
itself entirely in the defense and spread of the holy Cath- 
olic faith, and to help souls in Christian life and doctrine 
by preaching, public reading of the scriptures and other 
means of teaching the word of God, by giving the Spiritual 
Exercises, teaching Christian doctrine to children and the 
ignorant, hearing confessions and administering the sac- 
raments. It is also instituted to appease quarrels, help 
prisoners in jails and the sick in hospitals and all must 
be done by the Company gratuitously without expect- 
ing any human wages or salary for its labour.” 

It will be noticed that there is here no reference of any 
kind to reforming the church and only a vague and gen- 
eral phrase, “‘the defense of the faith,” which can be made 
to refer to a battle with heresy. Ignatius was perfectly 
aware through what he had seen at Paris of how menacing 
heresy was to his ideal for the world and his plan of serv- 
ice. Soon after his death, a large part of the energies 
of the great and growing army of his followers was ab- 
sorbed in open battle against it. But his method was 
positive. He did not wish to attack error but to pro- 
claim the faith and he had an unconquerable trust that 
the sincere ministry of the word and sacraments, the 
holy discipline of the Church, would save men from error 
and from sin. He thought far less about heresy than his 

175 


176 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


followers and seldom spoke of it. He felt that the truth 
of God was mighty and must prevail if the Company de- 
clared it faithfully by word and life. 

He could not have been ignorant of the inveterate 
abuses in the Church, for the letters of his missioners 
told him of the lack of zeal and other evils among the 
parish clergy and the head of the papal reform commis- 
sion, Cardinal Contarini, was his close friend. But to 
this corruption he very seldom alludes. Not that he was 
in any sense lax in regard to discipline. He was con- 
stantly on his guard against his own faults and his stand- 
ard of character for the Company was so high that he ~ 
rejected more candidates than he received.’ But the 
government of the Church was not his affair. He con- 
sistently refused to consent to the acceptance by any of 
his followers of any ecclesiastical office from parish priest 
to cardinal, except a prelacy in Ethiopia under direct 
orders from the Pope, a position where authority was 
small; while the chief item in the salary was a good chance 
for martyrdom.” The government of the Church he left 
to those God had appointed to rule her. It was the part 
of the Company of Jesus to obey implicitly the earthly 
vicar of their heavenly captain and to use with unrest- 
ing diligence the means of grace God had given the world 
in His holy Church. This attitude of positive unques- 
tioning obedience he set forth in detail in the last ap- 
pendix to the Spiritual Exercises. But if without wait- 
ing to examine this attitude we put it alongside the Con- 
stitutions we find another illustration of that combina- 
tion so marked in the life of Ignatius, of extreme con- 
servatism and a rather daring tendency toward innova- 
tion. Ignatius was perfectly content with all the details 
of the ideal of the medieval Church. Any attempt to 
change it, even any failure to praise all its parts, he re- 


? This is a general impression gained from Polanco. There is no list, 
*The Pope; cited Pol. VI, p. 6. 


THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 177 


garded as wrong. But he was eager to find new methods 
for serving that unchanged ancient ideal. He therefore 
abandoned a number of what might be called the stock 
monastic ideas. 

The points on which the Constitutions and the prac- 
tice of the Company of Jesus differed from all, or most, 
of the previous religious orders may be briefly summar- 
ized as follows:* The oldest orders laid the chief em- 
phasis on saving their own souls and praying for the 
world: the Company on helping the souls of their neigh- 
bours and working for the world. They were not shut up 
so much within the walls of a monastery. They wore no 
distinct monk’s robe but dressed like clergymen of the 
country they were in. They had no fasts, scourgings or 
other ascetic exercises imposed on them by rule; these 
things might interfere with their work in the world. They 
were put through the Spiritual Exercises, a training of 
the soul formed by Ignatius before he wrote the Constitu- 
tions. Those who wished to enter the Company under- 
went also a very detailed “examination” to make evident 
to them the self denial of the life which lay before them. 
The ordinary novitiate or testing time was increased from 
one year to two years and once accepted postulants must 
pass through various grades before they became full pro- 
fessed. During this time they might be, without any 
ceremony, summarily dismissed. The Company of Jesus 
was consolidated as no other large religious order had 
ever been. This was done by destroying the capitular 
system which made of other orders a confederacy of chap- 
ters whose members were sessile in separate monasteries 
which elected their own abbots. The Company of Jesus 
was centralized. All appointments of importance in all 
the provinces were made by the general. All executives 
were expected to take advice, but the final decision was 
entirely in their hands subject to revision by their su- 

* Astrain I, p. LV ff. 


178 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


periors. The organization was military. No appoint- 
ments and very few decisions were made by vote. The 
rare meetings of the council might be compared to coun- 
cils of war. The comment of Ignatius on the duty of the 
provincials to take advice before important action is: 
“This is not to be understood as if the matter were to be 
decided by votes but the prepositus is to hear the opinions 
and reasons of others and then decide himself.” * 

Finally and perhaps most efficient were two points 
established by usage as much as by law: the professed be- 
came a body of highly educated priests trained for years in 
the methods of the New Learning of the Renascence which 
the older orders had most bitterly opposed: and secondly 
Ignatius, in receiving novices and also in his readiness to 
dismiss members from the lower ranks of the Company, 
was not only ready, but eager, to sacrifice numbers to 
quality. 

Not simply the form of the Company was from Ignatius; 
the spirit also was his. No founder of a religious order 
ever wrote so much to his followers, but the elaborate 
system of correspondence by which the whole Company 
was kept in touch with every part of it was only very 
carefully devised machinery. So long as Ignatius lived 
and until those who had known him well were mostly 
gone, the living spirit of him who was to his followers 
not only the General but “our Father Ignatius,” ani- 
mated the entire company, and the feet, the hands, the 
voices of the missioners and teachers were doing his work. 

No member of the Company moved or acted without 
orders and no soldier of the Company was supposed to 
have an attachment to any locality which would make him 
reluctant to start instantly for any other place in the 
world where he was ordered to go. 

Before the foundation of the Company many requests 
came to the “poor pilgrim priests” to do work in Italian 

‘Letts. V, 198. 


THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 179 


cities and the first of many members of the Company to 
go on missions to the heathen started just as the bull of 
institution was issued, leaving in writing his vows, his 
consent to the foundation and his vote for the general. 

To wade through the four thousand pages in which 
the work of the Company of Jesus during the lifetime 
of Ignatius has been recorded by his secretary Polanco 
using the official reports, is to wonder sometimes how so 
heroic a tale of devotion could be told in so dull a way. 
Perhaps a few scattered lights may make plain the great- 
ness of the labours and successes of these men who car- 
ried the spirit of Ignatius over western Europe. They 
went forth on foot, at first two and two, afterwards, when 
young men were often sent in migrations to other schools 
or houses, in larger bands. ‘Towards the end of the life 
of Ignatius it became the custom to have horses to carry 
clothes or books and for the tired to ride in turn.° 

The old reader of Amadis of Gaul and other romances 
of chivalry, liked to review these knights errant of the 
word of God before they started and they presented them- 
selves before him that he might see that they were prop- 
erly equipped for the road with caps, staves and cloaks.° 
These men were going out to imitate the apostles in pro- 
claiming the gospel by word and example. Camara wrote 
in his memorabilia, ‘I have often heard our Father say 
that he wanted no one in the Company who sought only 
to save himself but all must help others to salvation.” * 

Their fundamental work was preaching and, as many 
of the parish priests did not preach, they had the same 
advantage possessed by the earlier Protestant preachers; 
audiences to whom preaching was more or less of a nov- 
elty. The members of the Company were highly edu- 
cated and well trained, for, from the first, they preached 


5 Pol. V, 28. °I have often seen him do this. Manareus, Scripta, I, 524. 
‘Scripta, I, 232. 


180 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


regularly before their comrades in houses and colleges; 
but every member did not preach: only those who had 
gifts for it. To those picked and trained men zeal gave 
power in the pulpit. They roused whole cities as Lainez 
did at Venice, Parma and Florence, Domenech at Palermo 
and Messina, Estrada at Oporto, Salamanca and Sara- 
gossa, Araoz at Valladolid, Valencia and Madrid. They 
used street preaching at first, but gradually came to preach 
in churches; nor did they neglect smaller places. When 
Araoz, a nephew of Ignatius, preached in Basque at 
Azpeitia, more than four thousand people flocked from 
the surrounding country and climbed trees and roofs to 
hear him.® In big cities their audiences were even larger. 
Lainez preached in the cathedral of Siena on feast days 
to eight or nine thousand people.’ The brilliant young 
Strada preached in Spain, sometimes three or four times 
in one day, to at least three thousand people, and after 
he had preached in the cathedral for two hours it seemed 
to his auditors “when his sermon was drawing to a close 
that he had just begun.”’*® On another occasion ten years 
later, at Barcelona, when he preached for an hour and a 
half, ‘“No one was seen to move hands or feet or head, 
nor to cough nor spit, but they remained hanging on his 
‘lips to the end.”** Father Miron preached almost every 
day and found such thirst for hearing the word of God 
that “when he had preached two hours and sometimes 
three it seemed to his congregation short.”*? On Good 
Fridays sermons even lasted for three or four hours.” 
They were also fond of using what our forefathers 
called expository preaching: reading chapters of scrip- 
ture with running comments. Their favourite author was 
St. Paul, especially the Epistle to the Romans. This may 
have come about because he had been the chosen author 


Pol. I, 89. °Pol. I, 271. Pol. I, p. 196. ™Pol. V, 381. ”Pol. Il, 95. 
Pol. II, 280, III, 3. 


THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 181 


of the heretics or because in his youth Ignatius had been 
especially devoted to St. Paul.“* At Bastia in Corsica 
Father Immanuel explained every day the Epistle to the 
Romans and “when he went to visit neighbouring places, 
his presence was so anxiously and impatiently awaited by 
his hearers that every day both men and women came to 
see him and beg him to come back.’’”” 

That this interest in the works of St. Paul as a serial 
was not everywhere so overwhelming, is indicated by the 
following little sketch which brings a rare touch of 
humour into the rather heavy pages of Polanco. “It hap- 
pened once at Perugia that a certain strolling mounte- 
bank put up his flag in front of the doors of the chief 
church and was selling to the people not only his words 
but his false medicines in flasks and as salves. This was 
at the very hour when a certain lecturer in the church 
was explaining the Epistles of St. Paul to some forty 
hearers; while the mountebank outside had five hundred 
listeners; among whom were priests and monks. Father 
Johannes Niger happened to be coming back from the 
hospital and recognizing the craft of the devil, he sprang 
on a stone post near the mountebank and began to promise 
the people that he would give them for nothing much more 
healthy medicine. When the mountebank saw that his 
crowd had left him and perceived that Father Johannes 
was inveighing against the devil the father of lies and 
all his ministers and saying that they ought to be over- 
whelmed with stones rather than allowed every day to 
profane the very temples of the Holy Ghost, he and his 
comrades became frightened lest things might go from 
words to those stones he heard alluded to, so, gathering 
together all his paraphernalia, he fled and as soon as pos- 
sible left the city never to come back.” 

The missioners were extremely diligent in hearing con- 


“4 Pol, II, 28, 519, 567; III, 42; IV, 83, 146; V, 339. ™Pol. III, 105. * Pol. 
II, 434. : 


182 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


fessions; for which they were trained by the discussion 
of cases of conscience. In some cities their confessors 
had not time to take food; in another “five confessors 
worked until the third hour of the night with scarcely 
time to draw breath’; in another ‘‘people waited three, 
four or five days in the church from morning until night 
to get the chance to confess.’’*’ They were also very 
active in promoting frequent communion, preferably once 
a week, a practice which aroused great opposition among 
some orthodox people; for example a minister general of 
the Franciscans tried to induce the vicar of Perugia not 
to allow frequent communion to those not members of a | 
religious order.*® 

To this positive ministry of the word and the sacra- 
ments, they added direct attacks on particular sins. The 
habit of blasphemy was inveterate in Spain and they 
founded many fraternities to oppose it. For instance at 
Gandia they got the people to vote a law fining for the 
benefit of the poor any one who blasphemed and formed a 
fraternity whose numbers were sworn to rebuke anyone 
they heard swear. If the swearer was too poor to pay 
his fine, he had to kiss publicly a cross marked on the 
ground.” 

They did not lack courage to attack profitable sins. 
Father Frusius found a certain city in Sicily so oppressed 
by money lenders “‘that many citizens burdened with in- 
tolerable usury had fled to the mountains and were living 
in caves.” He saw to it that all these usurers confessed 
and were forced to agree to make restitution according 
to the judgment of the bishop. In consequence one hun- 
dred and fifty families came back to the city.”” Another 
preacher compelled the restitution in two cities of 6,000 
gold ducats.”” The Church said taking usury was a sin 
and it meant by usury not excessive interest but any in- 


™ Pol, It, 246; IU, 31; V, 306. '* Pol, 1V, 155. ™ Pol V, 371.00 Pelee 
™ Pol, IV, 213. 


THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 183 


terest. The law of the Church was by this time as badly 
kept in Italy and Spain as the prohibition law is in Amer- 
ica and all sorts of legal quibbles had been devised to 
make the profession of a banker one a good Catholic could 
follow. The members of the Company did not hesi- 
tate to proclaim the law of the Church to a great trading 
city like Genoa which would have been ruined by its strict 
application.” 

The members of the Company did a great deal to help 
the poor, not only by collecting money for them, but by 
courageously standing up for them against oppression. 
For example, in Monreale the fathers of the College of 
the Company became aware that there were two magis- 
trates who plundered the poor almost openly and by 
threats prevented all resistance to their exactions. These 
two corrupt officials had great influence with the governor 
and he gave more heed to the lies they told him than to 
the complaints of the poor about the oppression they 
suffered. Sometimes he even answered appeals by pun- 
ishment instead of redress. The governor perished in a 
shipwreck and was succeeded by his brother. These two 
evil magistrates began to act the same way under the 
new governor and no one, not even the suffragan bishop, 
dared to talk with him about it. But the fathers of the 
college brought certain facts to the governor’s attention 
and urged him to make a thorough investigation. He 
found a- great deal of wickedness, removed the offenders, 
replaced them by good magistrates and ordered suits 
opened for the restitution of the large sums gained by 
grinding the faces of the poor.” 

One of the favourite good works of the Company was 
to attack vice by opening houses of refuge for repentant 
magdalens, after the model of one founded by Ignatius 
in Rome. For these they got houses from the city or 


= Pol. I, passim II, 620; III, 84, 310; IV, 33, 213; V, 105. 
Ol. V¥, 210. 


184 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


used some vacant convent where the women could stay 
until they were either married (with dowries provided by 
charitable people) or decided to express their penitence by 
becoming nuns.”* 

The members of the Company brought about many 
restitutions of ill-gotten gain; either won from young 
men at play or gained by dishonest, but not illegal, prac- 
tices in business. A man, as a result of frequently tak- 
ing communion, went back twenty years in his ac- 
counts to make restitution to those he had wronged and 
in addition “imitating Zaccheus, gave a large part of his 
goods in alms for the poor.”” 

The members of the Company expressed its spirit, not ~ 
only by proclaiming repentance, faith and good works 
from the pulpit and by the sacraments, but also by their 
example. They were active in founding and extending 
asylums for orphans.*” They were very assiduous in visit- 
ing the sick and, in preparation for this service, every 
novice must spend at least one month as an ordinary pren- 
tice attendant in a hospital, doing the most menial serv- 
ices. If he showed the least unwillingness he was rejected. 
Imprisonment for debt was then everywhere common 
and the condition of many of these poor debtors was 
deplorable. The members of the Company visited them 
in prison and in many places made collections, paid their 
obligations and set them free.” They visited other 
prisoners also and often accompanied the condemned to 
the scaffold. The cruel criminal code of the times caused 
continual executions, and the fathers saved many from 
utter despair; for instance, a Sicilian nobleman, who when 
sentenced “offered himself to all the devils and tried to 
commit suicide in his cell,” was brought by them to a 
repentant frame of mind.” 


* Pol. II, 234; III, 204: 222. “Pol. IV, 392; V, 468, 517. Pol. III, 203. 
*7 Pol. I, passim II, 233. * Pol. Ti, 2335°V, 2105 97 


THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 185 


They were peacemakers; one of their most common 
and fruitful efforts was to inculcate in preaching, and 
also by private conversations, the fundamental precept 
of Christ, “If ye forgive not men their trespasses neither 
will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses.” ” 
Certain parts of Italy and Spain were plagued by feuds 
as deadly as those which for the last few years have filled, 
and are still filling, the streets of Herrin, Llinois, with 
cowardly murder. In communities where public opinion 
held these legacies of murder sacred, the ordinary in- 
fluence of the Church was as powerless to create an 
effective general detestation of the hatred, cruelty and 
treachery of these feuds as the influence of the churches 
has been powerless in our own day to stem the tide of 
murder and revenge in central Illinois. But the members 
of the Company were continually reconciling quarrels. 
Sometimes these were not very serious, as when, for in- 
stance, two respectable women quarrelled, and one hit 
the other. For this she had been five months in jail where 
She had fallen ill. The fathers induced her opponent, who 
had her arrested, to go to the jail and nurse her. But 
many of these quarrels were deadly; like the enmity be- 
tween two Sicilians each of whom had a son murdered in 
the feud. They had long kept away from confession and 
one had refused to say the Lord’s prayer “as we forgive 
our debtors.” Yielding to the teaching of the mem- 
bers of the Company they publicly forgave each other. 
_ Another feud the fathers healed had lasted seven years 
and cost many lives, while another one had involved two 
whole villages in deadly hostility.” 

In healing domestic troubles, also, they were very 
active as when they reconciled a husband with his wife, 
from whom he had been separated for nine years. They 
solved some very complicated troubles: for instance, “A 


Matthew, VI, 15. ™Pol. II, 8-24; II, 197, 226, 530, 650; III, 394, 414, 
84, etc. 


186 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


certain woman, a servant to a married couple, was driven 
by the evil spirit to tell the wife that her husband planned 
to poison her. The wife fled to her father’s house. Where- 
upon the servant told the husband that his wife had 
planned to poison him, and mixing something with ashes 
and brine, gave it to the cat. The cat died and the serv- 
ant, though twice put to the torture, persisted in her 
lying accusations of the innocent; so husband and wife 
were separated. Some years afterward the servant came 
to a neighbouring city where a father of the Company so 
moved her heart that she confessed her sin.”’ ** 

Such good deeds as these were obligatory on all mem- 
bers of the Company no matter how important their 
mission. When at the request of the Pope, Ignatius sent 
two of his best theologians as advisers to the Council of 
Trent, he gave them detailed instructions that, so far as 
possible, they were to preach, ‘“‘never touching on points 
where Protestants and Catholics differ,” expound the 
scriptures, hear confessions, teach children, talk with men 
about salvation and visit the poor in the hospitals.” 

The tone of life which the followers of Ignatius recom- 
mended in the pulpit and confessional and in their private 
talk, was decidedly serious. They seem to have been op- 
posed to most, if not all, popular recreations. “In a town 
in Spain when an exhibition of tight-rope walking had 
been made ready in the market place and the people and 
the magistrates were met together to see it, Father Bap- 
tista sent his associates who begged the magistrates in his 
name to order the acrobat to go away and not to suffer 
that sort of amusement to be offered to the people; be- 
cause there was in it as much danger to the soul as to the 
body.” ** In the city of Cordova, a certain magistrate 
who had been a great supporter of giving bull fights and 
other games to the people, began after he had confessed 
to a member of the Company, to oppose this sort of spec- 


= Pol. V, 145-160. “Lett. I, 388. * Pol. IV, 348. 


THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 187 


tacle “most offensive to God.” Finally by a threat of 
leaving the city he procured the suppression of bull fights; 
“and anyone who knows the zeal with which the nobles 
of that city were addicted to these spectacles will under- 
stand how difficult was this victory.” ** Macaulay’s sneer 
at the Puritan suppression of bull-baiting in England in 
the seventeenth century that they did it “not because it 
gave pain to the bull but because it gave pleasure to the 
spectators,” is both literally true and utterly untrue in 
spirit. Both the English Puritans and the Spanish Jesuits 
opposed bull-fighting because it seemed to them a friv- 
olous amusement, unworthy of a true Christian and one 
which brought other evils in its train. The Jesuit mis- 
sioners frequently got women to cut their hair and give 
up wearing jewels. They sometimes refused to let jew- 
elry be sold for the benefit of the poor lest it should 
become a snare to others; so the earrings and bracelets 
were broken and sold as gold. The good fathers do not 
seem to have reflected that the broken gold could be 
easily melted down and formed into new jewelry. 
They made very active war on the popular books of 
chivalry—Amadis of Gaul and others of that sort, so loved 
in his youth by Ignatius. In the Company’s church in 
Gandia, Spain, the preacher exhorted his hearers to bring 
all such books to the courtyard of the college and receive 
for them missals, prayer books and edifying works. On 
one occasion, in the midst of the university, while boys 
dancing round the pyre chanted the Christian doctrine, 
over fifty romances were burnt. These romances of chiv- 
alry though intolerably prolix, are mostly so harmless 
morally compared to many modern novels, that one won- 
ders why they were so eager to destroy them. Probably 
the modern commentator on the Chronicle is right in his 
conjecture that they were afraid “the people would waste 
their time in reading these useless books, and once accus- 
* Pol. V, 517. 


188 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


tomed to them, would be kept away from pious and more 
serious works.” *° 


This chanting of Christian doctrine was a device for 
making the straight and narrow road more pleasant. Two 
hundred boys were trained in it, and they taught many 
others. It would surely be a very difficult task to turn 
into popular songs the answers on the ten commandments 
in the shorter catechism by which many of us were trained 
in our youth. But something very like this seems to have 
been done by the early missioners of the Company of 
Jesus in Gandia. “In the whole city day or night nothing 
else was sung by big or little except the Christian doc- 
trine. The workers at trades in the city and the farmers — 
in the fields solaced their labours with this song and 
mothers did not blush to learn it from their sons. . . 
Four hundred boys (no small number for that little city) 
met on Sundays and feast days to recite the catechism. 
They were keen to point out the mistakes of their com- 
rades; and those who said it best had prizes, rosaries or 
pious books, and so many learned it well that sometimes 
it was necessary to give seventy or eighty prizes.”’*° 

The preachers and confessors of the Company opposed 
cosmetics and paint for their women penitents even in 
the Kingdom of Naples where the use of such aids to 
beauty was taken as a matter of course.*” Questions 
about the costume of women have always been puzzling 
to preachers, even to those as downright and unafraid 
as the members of the Company. It is not surprising 
therefore that this question of cosmetics was referred to 
“our Father Ignatius.” He replied, “So far as the use 
of cosmetics by the Neapolitan women is concerned: if 
they do it as an aid to some evil action, it is a mortal 
sin and they cannot have absolution. If they do it be- 
cause their husbands want them to, they may be given 


se Oe LNs ays tae * Pol. IV, 350. * Pol. IV, 174; V, 174. 


THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 189 


absolution. But it is good to persuade them to persuade 
their husbands not to make them use that vanity. If they 
do it out of vanity and to appear beautiful, although 
they have no other intention of mortal sin, using cosmetics 
isnot a mortalsin. Nevertheless it is a great imperfection 
and not without sin; although not mortal sin. And 
though it can be absolved, it seems better for the con- 
fessors of our Company (which desires the perfection of 
everybody) to act as follows: If the first exhortation 
does not stop it, to say to these women plainly, that if 
they wish to remain in such an imperfect religious atti- 
tude, they do not wish to have anything more to do with 
them and that they may go where they will elsewhere to 
make their confession. Nevertheless, either because it is 
a small matter, or for any other reason, discretion may be 
used in some special cases and this ought not to be made so 
strict a rule as not to leave any room for exceptions.” *° 

It would not be right to say that the Company of Jesus 
wished the world to be entirely without amusement. Even 
the novices were left, as we shall see, at least one game, 
but they wished these amusements to be of a serious char- 
acter. As for example, the students of the college of 
Medina del Campo gave “amid the greatest applause and 
to no small edification, the tragedy of Jephthah killing his 
daughter, written by one of the brethren, which set forth 
moral instruction in opportune places.” * . . . The stu- 
dents of the College of Cordova gave a Latin comedy 
based on the parable of the prodigal son, “those passages 
being cut out which were not well fitted for pious ears.” 
Together with the introductory oration it lasted for three 
hours. Each act was explained by Spanish verses to which 
was added a brief comment drawing its moral lessons. 
“Those who knew Latin said they had never seen anything 
which pleased them more.” *° The Company even en- 
dorsed a special pious game of cards. This was invented 


8 Letts, VIII, 337, Compare IX, 266. ™ Pol. V, 421. 


190 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


by the ex-duke of Gandia, a descendant of Pope Alex- 
ander VI, who had given up the wealth and state of one 
of the leading grandees of Spain to fight for God in the 
Company of Jesus. When he urged the Infanta of Spain, 
then engaged to the Prince of Portugal, to banish the in- 
veterate card playing of her future husband’s palace, he 
had promised that he would teach her a better game. A 
year later in the palace at Lisbon, she reminded him of 
his promise. He took forty-eight blank cards and ordered 
that on twenty-four the names of virtues should be in- 
scribed and on twenty-four the names of vices. On each 
there was written a sentence condemning or commending. 
At the bottom of each card was a phrase to be read aloud ~ 
by him who drew it. In the case of the virtues this 
expressed the holder’s confusion because of his lack of that 
virtue—in the case of the vices, the holder of any card 
found a sentence of self condemnation because he was 
interested in such a vice. Whichever side got the most 
virtue cards won. Each of the other side was obliged to 
read aloud what was on the bottom of his card to the great 
confusion of any who were known to practise these vices.** 
The game had an immediate success. (12). The Prin- 
cess and her ladies played it, and the chronicler says that 
the excitement was as great as if a large stake were to 
be won or lost. Ignatius heard of it and approved.” It 
may be doubted whether the gentlemen of the suite of 
the Prince were drawn to adopt permanently this game 
of the virtues and vices instead of whatever took for them 
the place of bridge, but it shows at least that the good 
father was willing to try to combine instruction and 
amusement. | 
The serious and noble attitude toward life which lay 
behind all this that we call Puritan, is essentially the same 
serious and noble attitude which inspired the ideal of men 


Pol. V,. 522. “Pol, III, 357. “Letts. X, 381, 649; XI, 45. 


THE WORK OF THE COMPANY 191 


like Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards in New Eng- 
land two hundred years ago, or of men like John Knox in 
Scotland four hundred years ago. We have changed. Who 
dare say that’ we are stronger or wiser? But we have 
changed: both Catholic and Protestant. What would 
Ignatius Loyola or Franciscus Borgia have said about this 
notice posted throughout a modern pious Catholic 
community? ‘On such and such a date the Sodality of 
the B. V. M. will give a euchre party and dance in aid of 
the Church of Saint X at eight o’clock.”’ 


CHAPTER XIII 
OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 


Ignatius Loyola almost from the time of his conversion 
up to the very eve of the foundation of the Company, met 
menacing suspicion in Spain, Paris, Jerusalem, Venice 
and Rome. That may be explained by two facts: it was 
an age when the Church was in danger, and Ignatius was 
very independent and entirely unknown. But why serious © 
opposition and bitter attack continued after he and his 
Company had been taken under the special protection of 
the popes, is more difficult to explain: for this opposition 
did not come, while Ignatius was alive, from the Prot- 
estants. Up to the time of his death the Company of 
Jesus had not yet occupied so conspicuously the forefront 
of the battle, as to draw upon themselves the concentrated 
fire of the opponents of the Church. Nor is any allusion 
here made to the accusations from almost all Roman 
Catholic countries which brought about their suppression 
by the Pope more than two hundred years after the death 
of their founder. With these charges this book has noth- 
ing whatever to do. It has been already pointed out that, 
if the charges for which the Pope suppressed the Jesuits 
in 1773 were true, they must have entirely departed from 
the spirit and broken the explicit commands of their foun- 
der. The continued, one might say uninterrupted, opposi- 
tion to the Company on the part of many Roman Catholic 
people, is a puzzling phenomenon which demands at least 
an attempt at explanation. For one who knows Ignatius 
at all in his writings and letters, it is hard to understand 
how good Catholics could have opposed the work of a 

192 


OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 193 


man so entirely loyal to the Church. How did it come 
about that highly orthodox preachers and theologians 
accused of heresy the writings of one who said that if the 
Church called white black we should believe it was black 
because the Church was the organ of the Holy Ghost? * 
The only answer possible is to point out and illustrate 
from the early history of the Company, some of the trace- 
able causes of this opposition. 

In the first place it ought to be said that the common 
Protestant assumption that the Roman Catholic Church 
has always been a huge semi-hypnotized mass of human 
beings accepting by rote without any exercise of intel- 
ligence, whatever is said or done by their superiors from 
priests to bishops, a common dead level of uniformity 
where everyone must agree with everyone else about every- 
thing, is not true and has never been true. Great contro- 
versies have agitated the Church; such as the controversy 
over conciliar supremacy, or the age long debate over the 
immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. Terrible 
criticisms of her condition or administration have been 
boldly uttered by sons of the Church who never dreamed 
of leaving her. The orthodox Dante puts popes in hell. 
Deep and strong differences of opinion have sometimes 
centered about men. Savonarola, executed as a heretic 
and schismatic at the urging of papal commissioners, was 
held to be a saint in the Dominican convents of North 
Italy and venerated by St. Philip Neri the intimate friend 
of Ignatius.” Erasmus, solemnly cursed in hundreds of 
pulpits as the cause of the Protestant schism, was patron- 
ized by Pope Clement, urgently called to Rome to help 
him by Adrian VI and offered the red hat of a Cardinal 
by Paul III.’ 

There is nothing therefore unique in the history of the 
Church, in the mere fact that very great differences of 
opinion should be expressed openly in regard to the use- 


* Spiritual Exercises, Regulae p. 556. 7 Villari, II, 417. *Froude, 419, 420. 


194 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


fulness of the Company of Jesus. 

Opposition to the Company came from a number of 
very different causes. ‘The most obvious source of dis- 
like was bad men whose gain or pleasure was interfered 
with by the efforts of the fathers. For example, very 
bitter opposition was stirred up in Rome by Ignatius him- 
self some six years after the founding of the Company. A 
certain man had led a wife to run away from her husband. 
Ignatius persuaded her to come to his house of refuge 
for women. Whereupon the man began to stone the house 
of refuge at night. He even had pamphlets printed and 
distributed which contained accusations of horrible impur- 
ity, impiety and crimes, so that the fathers could hardly 
appear in public without “being reviled by some impudent 
scoundrel or greeted with curses.” When patience had 
ceased to be a virtue, Ignatius asked the Pope to inves- 
tigate. He appointed the governor of the city and his 
vicar to examine the charges. They pronounced them false 
and would have severely punished the slanderer if Igna- 
tius had not intervened on his behalf. Touched by this 


and healed of the “disease of his insane passion,” the 


slanderer became a friend and benefactor of Ignatius and 
the Company.* 

Nevertheless, as scandal is for many people more Pays 
esting to talk about than virtue, incidents like this left a 
certain taint, often unconscious, in some people’s minds. 
Puritans who denounce sin without fear or favour are 
always apt to suffer in this way. 

Another cause (sometimes an unconscious one) was the 
jealousy of monks of other orders. The rivalry between 
different orders of monks is very familiar to all readers 
of the history of the Church. It sometimes takes naive 
and amusing forms rather resembling the rivalry which 
may exist between two loyal regiments of an army. Any- 
body who talked with members of the two infantry regi- 


“ Ribad. f. 100. 


we a | 


OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 195 


ments, who, in the Great War, fought in the neighbor- 
hood of Belleau Wood, remembers their caustic comments 
on the marines getting all the popular praise for those 
glorious actions; because the regulations permitted news- 
paper correspondents to write about the marines but not 
to mention the numbers of the units in any engagement. 
The Jesuits have always been extremely proud of their 
regiment in the army of God and apt to feel that what 
“ours” did was a little better done than what others did. 
And the others did not altogether like it. For example, 
a certain official of the Franciscans tried to persuade the 
vicar of Perugia to stop the missioners of the Company 
from giving the communion very frequently and “that 
good monk said in the course of his argument; ‘there was 
nothing in all this talk about the wonderful deeds of the 
Company in India because there were few of the Company 
there, while the King of Portugal had sent hundreds of 
Franciscans to India.’” It hardly seems necessary to 
bring in as the chronicler does, the devil as the special 
instigator of this rather natural piece of human weakness.° 
A letter written by order of Ignatius recognizes this mo- 
nastic jealousy as one of the Company’s difficulties. ‘“The 
matter of getting license from the Emperor to hold real 
estate in lower Germany, will soon be arranged by God’s 
help. That the religious orders oppose it, is not to be won- 
dered at. They are our sharpest opponents, while on the 
other hand we do our best to deserve well of them. May 
God forgive them.” ° When the Company tried in 1555 to 
establish themselves in Nymwegen the members of other 
religious orders in the city said they would leave if the 
Company was permitted to enter.’ 

The chronicler seems to have the feeling that the Com- 
pany had a type of religion a little more precious than any- 
one else had, for, relating how Father Franciscus Borgia 
had affected the palace of the Princess Joanna at Lisbon 

© Pol. IV, 155. ° Letts. IX, 587. ™Pol. V, 279. 


196 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


so that “whoever entered it seemed to be entering a relig- 
ious house, where noblewomen and their servants went to 
weekly lessons in Christian doctrine as willingly as they 
had been accustomed to go to vain spectacles,” adds “and 
they seemed to weep for the lost time when they had lacked 
this doctrine of the Fathers of the Company of Jesus.” ® 

There are indications that Ignatius himself was not free 
from this feeling that the Company was the first among 
the religious orders. This may have been the reason why 
he refused to amalgamate the Company with three other 
comparatively new orders, also mendicant priests of simi- 
lar aims, who wished at different times to join it—the 
Somaschi, the Theatines and the Barnabites.? Ignatius 
very politely but very firmly refused all consideration of 
these suggestions."° Nor did he ever care about codéper- 
ating with other orders. For instance one of the Company 
was taken prisoner in Sicily by a raid of Turkish pirates. 
When the friends of the captive could not raise three 
hundred gold pieces for his ransom, the Turks carried him 
to Africa. Ignatius was much concerned over the effort 
to ransom him or exchange him for a Turkish prisoner. 
There was a congregation for the redemption of captives 
which offered to codperate in redeeming this man. 
Ignatius refused their request “lest a door might be opened 
for ‘ours’ to mix in the affairs of that congregation.” 
The rules of the Company, indeed, forbade receiving any- 
one who had worn any monastic robe or even had training 
in another order. Exceptions were made,” but generally 
it did not work well. Many of those received as exceptions 
to this rule were dismissed and the society was satisfied 
that the rule was a good one.* (13) 

It is true that there are many instances in the life of 
Ignatius and his followers of friendship with individuals of 
other orders.’* With the Carthusians as a body they had 


°Pol. III, 359. ° Ribad. Dicta, Scripta I, 439-440. * Letts. I, 475, 476; IV, 
495, 496; Pol. II, 429. “Pol. III, 184; Comp. Letts. III, 357, 355-452; Also 
Letters Ig. to Salmeron. * Pol. III, 116, 334. ** Pol. III, 333. * Pol. II, 282, 
378; V, 91; V, 72. 


OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 197 


very friendly relations. But nevertheless, in general, the 
attitude of the Company might be called a “stand off” 
attitude. Their official chronicler even says, “It must 
be confessed experience teaches that a very close friend- 
ship with priests who are not of the Company, even though 
in other respects they are good and spiritual men and active 
in helping their neighbours, is not to be cultivated.” * 

The only explanation of a curious episode in the life 
of Ignatius would seem to be this subconscious attitude; 
for, in spite of his constant self examination, Ignatius, 
like everybody else, must have had a subconscious psy- 
chology. Ribadeneira writes, “One day after dinner our 
Father Ignatius and I were walking in the garden where 
many others were. While we were talking of various 
spiritual things, the Father stopped suddenly and said, 
‘Who are those walking over there?’ When he had made 
out that it was a certain priest of ours talking with a 
novice, he called the priest and asked, ‘What were you 
talking about with the novice?’ He said, ‘Father, we 
fell into talk on the subject of humility and self mortifi- 
cation and I was telling him of what I had seen or heard 
of these virtues in regard to friar Texida (a certain man of 
great reputation with some people),’° in order to exhort 
the young man to imitate him.’ To this the Father an- 
swered; ‘And is there any lack of examples of this sort in 
the Company of Jesus which you could set before a novice 
without seeking others among outsiders?’ And he re- 
buked the man with very severe words and ordered his 
name taken off the list of those who were allowed to talk 
freely to novices.” ™ 

It may have been on the part of Ignatius a prevision of 
the need of defense—but it must have been mixed with the 
feeling that the Company ranked very high amongst the 
many orders which served the Church—that he ordered 
* Pol. IV, 112. “He was a Franciscan. ™ Scripta, I, 365. 


198 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the two members sent at the request of the Pope to the 
Council of Trent, to get for the Company the approbation 
of the Council. An influential bishop ‘‘extremely friendly 
to the Company” thought it ought by no means to be 
attempted; partly because “no religious order had ever 
before been approved by any general council of the 
Church.’ ** 

Out of this intense love of the Company came a habit 
of the fathers which could not have been placating to those 
disposed to question their methods. For example, we have 
seen that when one of the cardinals opposed the founda- 
tion of the Company because he thought there were too 
many orders already, Ignatius thought ‘‘the good and pious 
man was tricked by the devil.”’*® The cardinal finally 
withdrew his opposition, but if he had known the Company 
was attributing to the devil his careful opinion on an 
abstract question of Church policy, it can hardly be 
thought it would have hastened his consent. The same 
evil spirit worked in the house and at the table of the 
Archbishop of Toledo against the Company.” This 
charge was retorted against the Company by some of the 
most bitter of their enemies. At the University of Sala- 
manca a learned and distinguished preacher said that 
Ignatius and his friends were the “precursors of antichrist 
bearing his banner.” ** 

There is of course nothing pecularly Jesuit or Roman 
Catholic in such bitter quarrels between sincere people 
working for the same end. These hatreds among pious 
people have their roots in human nature and their growth 
is helped by the simple logic that as God is with us, the 
devil must be with our opponents. That Protestant of 
Protestants, John Wesley, when he had broken with his 
earlier friends, the Moravians, in the middle of the eight- 
eenth century wrote, ‘‘I found it necessary openly and ex- 

% Pol. II, 254. Pol. I, 72. 0 Pol. IV, 415. Pol. I, 298. 


OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 199 


plicitly to warn all who fear God to beware of the German 
wolves falsely called Moravians.” ” 

Another sort of opposition came from some parish 
priests who disliked to see their churches emptied to fill 
the churches of the Company and their penitents flocking 
to the Company’s confessors.” When the schools of the 
Company began to flourish the teachers who lost pupils 
sometimes expressed hostility. In Perugia one of these 
came into a public examination and a little incautiously 
criticised the Latin theme of a scholar, saying no Latin au- 
thor would have written certain phrases. But when he was 
shown that Cicero used similar constructions he packed up 
and left the city early the next morning.” 

During the lifetime of Ignatius politics did not become 
a cause of opposition to the Company. He writes for 
instance to a missioner in Corsica who had sought advice 
“to attend to preaching the doctrines of the Christian 
life and not to become involved in any way with affairs 
of state. Prudence and holy discretion demand this and 
besides it is expressly ordered in our Constitutions.” ” 
Ignatius said once to Ribadeneira, speaking of some zeal- 
ous members of the Company “who wanted to reform the 
world and thrust themselves into the affairs of government 
like men of the state, that he did not approve of it. That 
when similar things came to him he was wont to think 
about what he should have to give account of to Our Lord 
at the Last Judgment. It seemed to him he would not be 
_ asked whether he had a plan to reform the whole world, 
but whether he had obeyed the laws of his Company, 
hearing confessions or preaching or reading the scriptures 
or governing the Company; in short, helping souls like 
a poor monk.”’** Fifty years after the death of Ignatius, 
a clear record that suspicion of political intrigue by the 
Jesuits was widespread, is found in one of the criticisms 


*2 Journal, III, 499. ** Pol. III, 272 and passim. ™ Pol. IV, 149 et passim. 
* Letts. V, 442. is Scripta, I, 435. 


200 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


made on Ribadeneira’s life of Ignatius by Father Man- 
areus, a younger contemporary of the founder. He says 
Ribadeneira uses the phrase “the Company ought to 
employ itself in /arge things and the Spanish translation 
says in great things. It would be better in my judgment to 
expunge both of these phrases; because, generally, in every 
nation among all peoples we are falsely accused of mixing 
ourselves in great affairs rightly belonging to princes or 
states. Let us not therefore give occasion for carping.””’ 

But, while we see by this example that political action 
on the part of its members, or the suspicion of it, became an 
active cause of opposition to the Company of Jesus within 
two generations of Ignatius’ death, it was not an active 
cause during his lifetime and his authority was used 
strongly against it. 

For centuries the privileges of monks, who were not 
under the ordinary jurisdiction of the episcopate, but 
owed direct obedience to the Pope had, from time to time, 
become a source of trouble with bishops and this hap- 
pened to the Company. Ignatius tried in every way to 
avoid this friction. For instance, when he found that 
the Bishop of Modena was raising questions as to the 
technical validity of the “faculties” or permissions from 
Rome to preach, confess, etc., he sent word that they were 
not to be used in any way displeasing to the Bishop; but 
according to his advice and wish. In cases where epis- 
copal attack on the society became acute, Ignatius was not 
in favour of appealing to the Inquisition against a defier 
of papal orders. He used the less violent action of canon 
law by procuring inhibitions of local judgment and cita- 
tions to Rome; where the rights of the Company were 
always sustained. 

Several of these conflicts with episcopal authority were 
rather desperate. At Saragossa the Archbishop excom- 
municated anybody who should hear mass, or preach, 

7" Scripta, I, 723. 


a oe 


OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 201 


in the chapel of the Company. The Augustinian friars 
paraded around the college of the Company, bearing a 
crucifix covered with black cloth and chanting the impre- 
cations of the one hundred and ninth psalm against the 
enemy of the righteous: “Let Satan stand at his right 
hand . . . and let his prayer become sin. . . . Let curs- 
ing come into his bowels like water and like oil into his 
bones, etc.” Posters were put up in the city representing 
the four chief fathers of the Company surrounded by 
devils with flames beneath them and derisive mottoes.”° 
To avoid riot they withdrew from the city, but were 
finally reinstated by the orders of the Princess Juana, 
regent of Spain for her brother Philip II. She forced the 
Archbishop to withdraw his excommunication by broad 
threats of the Inquisition. It is characteristic of the way 
Ignatius handled these affairs, that he wrote directing the 
head of the college to visit the Archbishop “and kiss his 
hands in my name; because, when properly informed, he 
showed himself so favourable to us and beg him to consider 
us all his sons and servants.” ~° 

Perhaps the worst and most illuminating of these 
struggles was with the Bishop of Cambrai. Father 
Bernard Olave went to show him the letters of the Pope. 
The Bishop was very indignant, received “ours” with many 
contumelious words and ordered his officials, if they found 
any of the Company preaching in his diocese, to put him 
in prison at once. He said the reason for this action was 
that all the mendicant orders of monks were going to 
bring suit in the ecclesiastical courts because the Jesuits 
did great injury to the parochial clergy and the religious 
orders by refusing to accept any fees either for preaching 
or for hearing confessions.*° A second interview was even 
more stormy. The Bishop scarcely glanced at the papal 
letters presented to him. “What,” he burst out, “do you 
want to do here preaching? Don’t you know we have 

Pol. V, 397, 398. * Letts. X, 215. ° Pol. IV, 286. 


202 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


plenty of preachers and learned ones too? Why don’t you 
go to the Germans, the Turks or the Indians, or even to 
the English, to become martyrs for the faith if you are 
so good as you wish people to think? But you are only 
hypocrites, vagabonds, seducers and floating scum. If 
you want to preach why don’t you join the Franciscans 
or some other approved order?” But Bernard answered: 
“Our order is approved by the Pope. Read it in the 
letters.”” “But you,” said the Bishop, ‘have fooled the 
Pope by your lies. I forbid you to preach in my diocese. 
If you do I will order you to prison.” There was nothing 
to be done with a man in this mood and Cardinal Pole, 
a great friend of the Company, advised Bernard to quit 
preaching while he tried to placate the enraged Bishop.” 

But all these causes of trouble were probably less 
potent in creating in some places an atmosphere hostile 
to the Company, than a single practice of theirs; defend- 
ing against parents the right of young boys to join the 
Company. That this was a very strong cause of hostility 
in many places is not emphasized by the biographers of 
Ignatius, but, to put together passages from the earliest 
chronicle of the Company and the repeated instructions of 
Ignatius in regard to it is to become aware how much 
trouble it caused them. 

When Jay went to Vienna in 1551 he found that “‘the 
devil before their arrival had scattered rumours that the 
Jesuits were hypocrites who shut people up in rooms with 
closed windows and compelled them to undergo long fasts 
in order that the Holy Ghost might come upon them and 
so they seduced young men and compelled them to take 
vows.” *” Ignatius had word in 1551 from the College of 
Colegne that “the parents of boys who wished to serve 
Christ rose against us like raging lions and tried to draw 
their boys back from our rule of a more perfect life and, 
when neither threats nor blandishments prevailed, they 

* Pol. IV, 304, 313. “Pol. Tl, 278: 


ee a ee, eee 


OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 203 


even sought help from the law; for they thought it insan- 
ity and a dishonour to the family for their sons to renounce 
the world and submit to the yoke of obedience.” ** The 
Jesuits were accused before the senate of “lying in ambush 
for the sons of patrician families, snatching them from the 
very arms of their parents, luring them by subtle arts into 
the Company and then sending them to remote places 
whence they could hardly be brought back.” ** 

In Rome itself, when two boys had disappeared their 
mothers came to the “church of the Company while mass 
was being celebrated, crying out and making a great dis- 
turbance, which they continued at the college and in the 
houses of some of the cardinals, saying that we had 
founded our colleges to steal boys and we had hidden theirs 
—while the truth was neither of them had ever entered 
either our house or our college.” * 

Some of the struggles.of parents to keep their sons out 
of the Company became causes célébres. 

Octavian Caesar was the son of a man high in the gov- 
ernment of Naples. When he was fifteen years old the 
boy asked the rector of the College of Naples to receive 
him into the Company as a novice. The rector refused 
because he had not the consent of his parents. The boy 
then tried to run off to Rome but his mother caught him 
and kept him shut up at home for some time. When he 
was free he suddenly joined some members of the Com- 
pany on a ship to Messina in Sicily “‘where seeing his zeal 
and perseverance he was accepted.” *° His mother moved 
heaven and earth to have him brought back to Naples. 
The Viceroy of Sicily questioned the boy and found he 
did not want to go back because he was afraid his mother 
might break down his loyalty to the call of God. The 
Viceroy said the boy could stay in Sicily. The lad with- 
stood the visit of his father, who returned to Naples satis- 


Pol. III, 266. * Reiffenberg, ctd. Pol. III, 267. “Letts, IV, 111, ™ Letts. 
VII, 674. 


204 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


fied his son was called of God. But, to placate his wife, 
he first tried vainly to procure papal letters ordering the 
boy’s return and finally got the Duke to write to Ignatius. 
To satisfy him, Ignatius wrote that if Octavian were to 
come to Rome “(which I do not know that he ought to do) 
he would be made to pass by Naples.” ‘Nevertheless he 
wrote to ‘ours’ not to send him to Rome,” but to take 
the first opportunity of sending him to a college in 
Spain.” ** Some months later, his father came to Rome 
and got the Pope to refer the matter to Cardinal Caraffa. 
He was Archbishop of Naples; no friend of Ignatius or the 
Company and a great friend of the parents of Octavian. 
He ordered Ignatius to restore the boy to his parents. 
Ignatius, however, going to see the Pope, quickly obtained 
permission not to obey these orders.** The mother, who 
loved Octavian more than any of her other sons, came to 
Rome and stirred up much sympathy among some of the 
cardinals. The case was again heard by other cardinals and 


Ignatius wrote to the boy giving him permission to come 


to Naples to see his parents and forbidding the rector 
and the provincial of Sicily from preventing his depar- 
ture.*° This of course did not touch the root of the trouble 
from the point of view of the parents, because the boy did 
not want to come and would not use a mere permission to 
come.** ‘Two months later another letter was written by 
Ignatius’ secretary, ‘“‘The mother of Octavian has come to 
Rome and stirred up much gossip in the city by her tears 
and pleadings among distinguished ecclesiastics and by 
saying publicly that we have stolen her son. The Cardinal 
of Carpi, our protector, has spoken three times to our 
Father Ignatius and twice to me, urging us to bring Octa- 
vian to Rome, so that, being examined personally in his 
house, the boy may be returned to us and there will be 
nothing left to say. Our Father was content to order a 


* Pol. III, 190. “Letts. V, 709-712. ™ Pol. IV, 18. “Letts. VII, 421. 
“Letts. VII, 675. 


OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 205 


letter written that Octavian should come to Rome soon, so 
that we may get this trouble off our backs.” To this letter 
there is a postscript which says that “our Father, after 
having ordered this letter written, has reconsidered and, 
taking into account what a bad example it would be, as 
well as the dangers of the journey, orders that the boy 
should not be sent no matter what letters are written; 
unless the letter is written by order of the Pope, whom we 
are bound to obey. . . . We hope however that His Holi- 
ness will not command any such thing.” * 

For three years Octavian persevered in preparing to 
become a member of the Company and his superiors were 
very content with his constancy and his diligence in study. 
But he became ill and was sent to his home in Naples to 
be nursed back to health. He behaved so severely towards 
his parents at first that they complained to the rector; 
who ordered him to be more gentle with them. After a 
month at home he returned to college improved in health 
but soon fell into a fever and became extremely melan- 
choly. He was then sent to a villa of his father for two 
months where he improved in health, but conceived such 
a hatred for the college that he could not bear to hear it 
mentioned. He wrote to Ignatius to say he was not fitted 
either in mind or body for the society and applied for ad- 
mission to the Theatine fathers who refused to receive 
him. A letter of Ignatius had no effect upon him and he 
joined his father and mother in talking very freely against 
the Company saying he had been led astray, had written 
to please his superiors, had taken vows without knowing 
what he was doing and other things of the sort.* 

During the lifetime of Ignatius these causes, of which 
only sample instances (14) are given, created in some 
extremely orthodox Roman Catholic circles a critical at- 
mosphere towards the Company which even the full 
patronage of the popes did not dissipate. Even their 

“Letts. VII, 670. “Pol. VI, 252-255. 


206 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


popular name of Jesuits (which the early members of the 
Company did not use) was made a ground of attack upon 
them. In pulpits and in pamphlets it was said that this 
name was a mark of presumptuous pride which implied a 
claim to be the only true followers of Jesus. (15) In 
the middle of the eighteenth century Wesley raised a sim- 
ilar objection against the Moravians. ‘They commonly 
style themselves Brethren. Now this implies that they 
are the only Christians in the world or at least that they 
are the best Christians in the world.” ** It seems rather 
hard, however, that the early members of the Company 
of Jesus were attacked for calling themselves Jesuits, a 
name given by their opponents which they did not use. 
Ignatius explained that the ‘‘Company” was called by the 
name of its Commander; as was usually the case. 

We do not get a true picture of the life of Ignatius if we 
fail to understand that it was passed not only amid affec- 
tion and admiration, but amid constant criticism and active 
opposition. He bore this opposition with patience and joy; 
pointing out to his followers that Christ warned His 
disciples that men would speak evil of them. This oppo- 
sition made trouble for the Company in many localities 
like Perugia, Bologna, Valencia, Strassburg, Cambrai, 
Salamanca, Alcala, Saragossa, Rome, Paris, Toledo, 
Cologne, Vienna, the Netherlands, etc. How bitter 
and how dangerous it was may be judged from two 
examples in which feeling against the Company expressed 
itself through mouthpieces so conspicuous that it became 
known in all centres of intelligence. 

Melchoir Cano was a very learned Dominican friar 
who at the age of thirty-five was appointed to the first 
chair of theology in the University of Salamanca—a posi- 
tion which gave him a sort of intellectual leadership in 
Spain. He was evidently very conscious of his duty as a 
watchdog of the Lord to give warning in regard to heresy 

“ Journal, III, 52. “Letts. XII, 615. 


OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 207 


no matter how distinguished the person tainted with it, 
Soon after the death of Ignatius he attacked Bartholomew 
Carranza, a brother Dominican who was Archbishop of 
Toledo; the richest and perhaps the most powerful prelate 
in the world. The result of Cano’s attack was that the 
Archbishop spent seventeen years as a prisoner of the 
Inquisition.** 

A few years after the formation of the Company, Cano 
attacked it in the pulpit and soon after wrote a pamphlet 
in which he suggested that the apparent good fruits of the 
Company were merely “‘the pits of plums and were to be 
suspected as tricks of the devil who often disguised himself 
as an angel of light.” “* Ignatius showed no signs of anger 
at this attack. He wrote that Cano spoke out of good zeal 
rather than with due knowledge.** His reply was to pro- 
cure a letter from the General of the Dominicans to Cano 
exhorting him to let the Company alone, and a letter from 
the Pope naming two Spanish bishops to take action 
against those who slandered the Company. Cano then 
accused the Spiritual Exercises of heresy and a commis- 
sion was appointed to examine the book. They blamed 
everything about it, from the fact that it was originally 
written in Spanish and not in Latin, through the fact that 
the Exercises lasted thirty days, to the name of the Com- 
pany of Jesus. They did make one criticism which seems 
clearly in the theological field. The Latin translation 
says: “even though it were true that no one could be 
saved unless he were predestinated” and the examiners 
said this plainly implied that a man might be saved who 
was not predestinated: which was the heretical opinion of 
a certain Catarino.** They called it “erroneous, rash, scan- 
dalous and even heretical.” °° The Provincial of Spain 
pointed out that there was no ambiguity in the Spanish 
original which read “even though it is true that no one 


“ Cambridge, 410. ‘“ Astrain, ctd. 325. “ Letts. II, 317-213. ‘ Astrain, 373. 
© Pol. III, 524. 


208 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


can be saved unless he is predestinated”’ and caused the 
Latin version to be changed. Ignatius blamed him very 
much for changing the Latin version because it had been 
approved by the Pope and added “‘he never would defend 
those opinions but the Church would defend him.” He 
also wrote that the idea, that some not predestinate can 
be saved, was not officially declared heretical. “For in the 
last council the work of Chaterino containing that opinion 
was presented and nothing was determined against it.” ” 

In spite of this serene confidence, the approval of popes 
could not merely in itself save Ignatius from virulent 
attack. The voice of the foremost theologian of Spain 
echoed through the ecclesiastical world and probably had 
much to do in determining the denunciation of the Com- 
pany by the Sorbonne, the theological faculty of the Uni- 
versity of Paris. 

The question came before the Sorbonne in the follow- 
ing way. Ignatius obtained from the King license to open 
a college at Paris. This had to be registered by the 
Parliament. In the committee of the Parliament, Father 
Broet of the Company found at once violent enemies—one 
said the devil was the author of the Company.** The 
Committee referred the matter to the Bishop of Paris and 
the faculty of theology. They were even more unfriendly. 
“Throwing such envenomed darts as could hardly be 
believed by one not present at the hearing.” ** The faculty 
finally decided that this new Company claiming in some 
peculiar sense as its own the name of Jesus, had abandoned 
the usual marks of religious orders, enjoyed privileges 
which injured episcopal authority, and other orders, 
princes and states and had abandoned the practise of the 
monastic virtues, abstinence, common religious ceremonies 
and ascetic discipline. ‘Therefore it seems dangerous in 
matters of faith, disturbing to the peace of the Church, 


“ Scripta, I, 308. Memoriale. “Letts. VI, 598. ™Pol. III, 289. ™ Pol. 
IIT, 292. 


ee —— 


OPPOSITION TO THE COMPANY 209 


subversive of monastic religion and greater in destruc- 
tion than in edification.”” Ignatius’ answer to this was, 
not to appeal to the ecclesiastical courts, but to ask the 
friends of the Company to write their opinions of its work. 
A great mass of such written testimony in favour of the 
Company was collected from kings, princes, city councils, 
universities, bishops and other witnesses. But the formal 
entry of the Company into Paris was long postponed. 


“Pol. IV, 329. 


CHAPTER XIV. 
IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY. 


In spite of all this widespread and bitter opposition the 
Company grew rapidly. It grew from the bottom upward. 
For eight years after its organization only two new pro- 
fessed were added, and during the next eight years of the 
life of Ignatius only thirty-five more were received to full 
vows.’ This small number must have been extremely 
busy in carrying the responsibility for the work which was 
being done. Eight years after its organization the Com- 
pany was located in twenty-two places organized into four 
provinces; Portugal, Spain and India were separate prov- 
inces and Sicily, Italy, Germany and France formed one 
province under the direct leadership of Ignatius. It had 
only seven houses of its own. Three years later it was es- 
tablished in forty-three places and Italy, outside Rome, 
was made a province. At the death of Ignatius twelve 
provinces contained eighty establishments of which forty 
odd were colleges, nine in Asia and South America and 
the others in Europe. About a thousand members in the 
various ranks of the Company carried on its work. This 
was only the beginning. The plant now firmly rooted 
continued to grow with great vigour. Five years after 
the death of Ignatius, Pope Pius IV wrote to Philip II of 
Spain: ‘It is something almost unbelievable to see how 
in a short time that Society has spread and how useful it 
has already become to the Church of God through its 
many colleges and with what zeal it opposes the pest of 


* Pol. VI, 40. 
210 


ee ee eee a Te re — a ee a 2 


IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY 211 


99 2 


heresy.”~ This growth was due to the confident and skil- 
ful leadership of Ignatius, but it continued vigorously 
after his death and, when the Company of Jesus was sup- 
pressed by the Pope 200 years later, it had 41 provinces 
and 22,000 members. 

Great confidence in success on the part of their 
commander is a large element in the morale of any com- 
pany, especially if it is organized in a military fashion. 
His intimates were very fond of telling after his death 
striking instances of the confidence of Ignatius in the 
future services and triumphs of the Company. In the 
early days at Rome when their college was leading a 
peripatetic existence in hired houses, he stood out for the 
purchase of a large piece of ground, saying, “the time will 
come when you will need even more land and very quickly 
you will be lacking two square feet rather than having one 
too much.” *® None of his followers was ever so dismayed 
that a letter from him could not restore courage to the 
remote struggler. 

One of the most skilful provisions of Ignatius for carry- 
ing on the government and maintaining the morale of the 
Company, was a very elaborate system of letters, which 
kept its different establishments constantly in touch with 
their general and enabled him to keep them in touch with 
each other. ‘““No founder of a religious order was ever so 
labourious in writing to his followers” * as Ignatius. He 
took the greatest possible pains over important letters, 
reading them again and again, spending sometimes two or 
three hours on a single letter.” This huge correspondence 
became a terrible burden. Quite early in his service he 
reckoned that “the letters we send amount to two hundred 
and fifty.’®° He wrote much about the importance of 
this correspondence. Establishments in Italy and Sicily 
were to write every week, in Spain, France and the Neth- 


? Cited Rocquain, p. 20. * Rib. 642, Edition 1593. ‘ Prolegomena, Letts. I, 6. 
5 Memoriale, Scripta, I, 225. ° Letts. I, 238. 


212 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


erlands every month, in the Indies every year. They 
were to receive answers in Italy every month, outside 
every four months; besides the general letter of news 
three times a year.’ These letters were not to be diffuse, 
nor filled with trivial things. Two copies were to be sent; 
one in Latin and the other in the vernacular. Things 
not for general edification were to be put in a separate 
letter or in a postcript. 

Criticism has been made of this regulation providing for 
two sorts of letters, “private” and “showable,” to be passed 
on to the entire Company. It could be foreseen that, as 
the Company grew and spread, things would naturally 
happen which it would be cruel and foolish to make 
widely known. The idea that everybody has an inherent 
right to know all about everything that happens to every- 
body else, comes out of a false idea of democracy and has 
no roots in morals or religion. It is the spawn of the 
practice of yellow journalism in its merciless and merce- 
nary pandering to impertinent curiosity. This provision 
for private letters might of course be abused. Almost any 
good rule may be abused, but it takes a rather strong 
prejudice to see in it an outcome of excessive craft or of 
anything else but the shrewd common sense of Ignatius. 

Ignatius’ confidence that his work was of God, who 
would “‘give the increase,” did not tend in the least to make 
him dispense with the use of wisdom in directing the work 
of his followers. We have seen how after arriving at 
Rome, he rapidly escaped from the exaggerated quakerism 
which impelled him to trample under foot the usages of 
human society. He soon came to feel the wisdom of con- 
sidering, especially, the relation of the Company to what in 
modern Protestant missions and evangelism are known as 
“strategic points” and “leaders.” Ignatius never allowed 
his followers to neglect helping the poor, teaching the 
ignorant, nor the care of the sick in hospitals, but when the 

"Letts. IT, 550. ® Letts. IV, 439. 


IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY 213 


King of Portugal wished the first member of the Company 
in his kingdom to become the tutor of his heir, Ignatius 
made him accept the King’s offer. He himself made 
a journey from Rome to Sicily to reconcile Duke Colonna 
with his wife, Joanna of Aragon.” He wrote letters which 
persuaded the daughter of the Viceroy of Sicily to marry 
according to her father’s wishes.** When the somewhat 
rash and free spoken Father Bobadilla ** had offended the 
Emperor by openly opposing the Interim (a futile attempt 
to reconcile Lutherans and Roman Catholics) and 
had been sent out of Germany, Ignatius received 
him in such a way as made it evident he did not 
endorse Bobadilla’s attitude.* Ignatius would have 
approved the idea of his secretary that, just as it seemed to 
be providential that the Company at its beginning had 
important friends in Rome, so it was by God’s direction 
that the earliest members of the Company in Spain had 
made friends at the royal court among the men whose 
favour and help was necessary to their establishment in 
the provinces of that country. 

It was said of William Pitt the elder when he was 
directing the mighty effort of England in war which all 
over the world turned victory into defeat, that every 
officer who talked with him in his cabinet came out full 
of the hope of success and the energy to gain it. This 
was the effect Ignatius had upon the missionaries he sent 
out to fight for the Kingdom of God. His power of in- 
spiration came from the fact that he let them see the 
horizon, and his horizon was broad. 

He was sending missionaries to two continents, he was 
organizing Europe into skeleton provinces and looking 
forward to the day when the nations should be covered 
with a network of schools, he was training in the Ger- 
man college the preachers who were to stay the great 
tide of Protestantism, he was writing the Constitutions 


°Pol. I, 156. ™ Pol. II, 427. “Pol. Il, 554. @ Pol. II, $54. ™Pol. I, 294. 


214 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


for a Company which was to be strong on four continents, 
but, amid all this, he found time and zeal for details. 
He wrote letters about buying wheat at reasonable prices 
and searched for wholesome cheap wine for the table. He 
discussed stuffs for robes, saw that the rooms were prop- 
erly swept, and made rules to guide the cooks in the use 
of salt. He was neither a dreamer, letting his hopes make 
him forget small duties, nor a martinet, seeing only the 
mechanics of life. His genius like that of every great 
executive, included, but was not mastered by, a capacity 
for boundless painstaking. 

In any labour or controversy Ignatius wished always 
that positive rather than negative arguments or methods 
should be employed. When any establishment was 
wronged by its neighbours, he abhorred lawsuits and al- 
ways advised patience or a peaceful compromise by the aid 
of common friends.** Members of the Company were 
directly advised to preach positive doctrine and to avoid 
controversy with the heretics.**° This was not only wise 
tactics in itself, but it had a second result of which 
Ignatius may or may not have thought. It saved the 
Jesuit preachers and writers, at least during his lifetime, 
from the terrible acrimony which prevailed on both sides 
in so much of the discussion between Catholics and Prot- 
estants. Luther used against his opponents the entire 
vocabulary of coarse abuse he had learned in his youth 
among the peasants. Calvin, whose nurture had been 
more gentle, could write a pamphlet which seemed to a 
calm and tolerant contemporary historian “filled with 
the most venomous lines.” *° Their Catholic opponents 
did not lag behind in this contest of bitterness. For ex- 
ample, the clergy of a great church had carved on one 
of the stalls in which they sat around the high altar for 
solemn worship, the figure of a boar preaching, with the 


inscription, “This is that swine Calvin” and this proof 


“Rib. 552, Ed. 1593. “Letts. I, 388. **De Thou, III, 74. Confirmed by 
Lenient, I, p. 181, ff. 


IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY 215 


of how Christians loved one another in the sixteenth cen- 
tury still exists in St. Sernin at Toulouse.” 

We have seen already a specimen of the readiness of 
Ignatius to ignore the past hostility of a bishop when 
a settlement had been made by what might be called 
friendly pressure instead of law. The most striking in- 
stance of this sort of wisdom is perhaps the attitude 
Ignatius ordered to be taken not long before his death, 
when his old opponent Caraffa became Pope Paul IV. 
Ribadeneira tells how he was sent to Flanders “when 
things looked stormy. Our Father advised me to be care- 
ful how I talked about what the Pope did and to take 
into account that everything I said would get to the ears 
of His Holiness. And because he had done things which 
seemed very hard to excuse, our Father said that what 
I had to do was to praise the actions of the previous Pope, 
Marcellus, and the good will he showed toward the Com- 
pany, without saying anything at all about the present 
Pope.” 

Ignatius was extremely anxious to avoid all causes for 
slander, hence the prompt punishment for any infringe- 
ment about the rule for going alone to see women,” al- 
though among his earliest and most faithful friends there 
had always been numbers of pious women. Immediately 
after the foundation, women, both individually and in 
convents, had been under the religious direction of the 
Company, but a few years later Ignatius got from Paul 
III a brief forbidding this.*” In this again he learned by 
experience. His old friend, Isabel Roser of Barcelona, 
to whom he had written fifteen years before, “I owe you 
more than any one in this world,” ™ had lost her husband. 
She made a cession of all her property for the use of 
the Company and came to live in Rome under the direc- 
tion of Ignatius. For two years the Company provided 


” Lenient, I, 183. * Rib. de Actis, Scripta I, 389. 7 Pol. III, 167. * Pol. I, 
iio Letts, 1, 517.. -* Letts, I, 85. 


216 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


her and two women of her household with lodging, food, 
clothes and service, through an old noble, Estevan de 
Guia, who acted as majordomo. She proved a most in- 
tractable person who would not keep her vows of obedi- 
ence, nor separate herself from worldly friends and rela- 
tives who kept spreading scandals about the Company 
and saying that she was kept under the Company’s care 
by force.” Ignatius, who had caused her property to 
be given back to her about a year after she made cession 
of it, released her from her vows of obedience, writing 
that he could no longer consider her as “a spiritual 
daughter but as a good and pious mother which she had 
many times shown herself to be to him.”** She made a 
hysterical scene with Ignatius before a number of his 
friends and hers. She said she had intended to give a 
large sum to the house of refuge, but, if the Company 
was no longer to receive vows of obedience from women, 
she would not give it. Ignatius replied he would not change 
his mind about what seemed to him for the greater glory 
of God, whether she gave or did not give. “After several 
hours the show (fiesta) came to an end.”™* ‘There was 
much ugly talk and the matter got before the ecclesiastical 
courts which decided for the Company. Isabel Roser 
went back to Barcelona, wrote to Ignatius asking pardon 
for the past and expressing her love for the Company, 
and shortly afterward entered a religious order.” 

Ignatius was particularly anxious to avoid the charge 
of greed. The members of the Company were forbidden 
to take any fees, to ask money from any one with whom 
they had talked of religious things and especially prohib- 
ited from telling any one by whose bed of illness they 
were in attendance to give or leave money to the Company. 
They could not be present when wills were made nor be 


™TLetts. I, 491. Comp. 441, 488. Scripta, I, 645-658. ™Letts. I, 424. 
* Letts. I, 439. ™ Letts. I, 439, N. 9, cited Epist. Mixt. IV, 148. 


IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY 217 


executors.** The houses of the Company could not own 
property—the real estate was held by trustees and the 
Company had no title to it defensible by law. But the 
colleges, none of which made any charge for instruction, 
must have foundations sufficient to feed and care for their 
students, and there were minute rules to keep the Jesuits 
of the house in any city from taking meals in the college, 
or otherwise profiting by their foundations. When an in- 
come-bearing property had been given to found a college 
at Padua, Ignatius wanted to fix on it an annuity for 
the nephew of the giver,” and he did similar things in 
other cases. 

Ribadeneira wrote that, although in the beginning 
Ignatius was not difficult about novices or new members, 
he became so and said that if anything made him wish 
to live, it was that he might be difficult about admitting 
members to the Company.** He wrote a good deal about 
the choice of novices. He said ‘“‘a man who was little use 
in the world was less use in the Company.”*’ To the five 
bars to admission in the Constitutions, he adds others: 
indomitable passions, inconstancy, dullness unfitting for 
study, weakness of body of any sort. “Other external 
gifts like nobility, as they do not suffice if the rest are 
wanting, so they are not necessary if the rest are present. 
Nevertheless, so far as they help to edification, they make 
those apt for other reasons, better fitted to be accepted.’’*® 
He wanted boys of good appearance and was displeased 
with a father who accepted a novice who had a broken 
nose.** He sent around a measure to prevent the accept- 
ance of undersized candidates. (He was himself a small 
man). He evidently sought noble boys as students for 
the colleges, but he lost no time with well-born ne’er-do- 
wells and once summarily dismissed the heir of a duke- 
dom and ten of his companions. When twenty-two lads 


°° Constitutions, VI, Cap. III, 7. ™ Pol. I, 275. ™ Rib. de Ratione Guber- 
nandi, Scripta, I, 444. “ib. ™Letts. IV, 36. “Scripta, I, 445. 


218 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


came down from Germany to the German College in Rome, 
he wrote word to send better picked youths the next time. 
What he particularly wanted was, first, devotion, and, 
second, brains; though men strong in the first, even though 
lacking in the second, might be extremely useful as tem- 
poral coadjutors, who did most of the manual labour, 
because “‘their simple faith and good example were most 
useful to others inside and outside the houses.’’*” 

Many who wished to be novices were refused and many 
were dismissed because they were found inapt, either 
during the two years’ novitiate or in the lower grades. In 
1552 one hundred and thirty were dismissed in Portugal, 
where there was a mutiny in the Company, and during 
the next four years at least two hundred were dismissed 
in the other provinces.** These dismissals were without 
fear or favour; the sons of princes or a younger brother 
of the member who succeeded Ignatius as general, went 
like any one else. A certain number left also of their 
own accord. Perhaps the most solid reason for the suc- 
cess of Ignatius’ ideal, next to his extraordinary person- 
ality, is that in recruiting the Company he tried for qual- 
ity rather than numbers. He despised mediocrity and 
always demanded aspiration toward perfection in religion. 
What he wanted was what he described as “that rare 
and excellent achievement which is worth six hundred 
common ones.’’** 

He gave little weight to the objections of the parents 
of young lads who wished to follow what he thought and 
the Church thought, was a higher way of living. This 
angered many people of his own age and seems to many 
more of our own day incredibly heartless. But to place 
ourselves at his point of view, without any attempt to 
decide whether that point of view is wrong or right, is 
to see that such an attitude seemed to him simply doing 


* Scripta, I, 232, Memoriale. ™ Boehmer, 289, cited Nadal II, 37. ™ Cited 
Hughes 118, from Letter on Obedience. 


IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY 219 


his duty toward God and the lads who said they heard 
the call of God in their hearts. 

Ignatius writes “in regard to young men from eighteen 
to twenty such as you write about, no wise man who is a 
good Catholic ought to doubt that they should be ad- 
mitted to probation in religious orders even without the 
consent of their parents.” He gives two examples out 
of many he might cite. ‘The son of the first noble in 
Portugal after the King, finding himself seriously and 
continually called of God in his heart, scaled in the middle 
of the night the wall of the college where he was locked 
up and came to ours at Coimbra. His family took this 
very hard and did everything to get the young man out 
of our house. They persuaded the King to order him 
sent somewhere else to decide about his plans in life. 
He, however, refused to come out and was afraid of 
danger to his soul if he left our house. Ours defended 
him before the King with such Christian reasons that all 
attempts of his family were vain and the young man re- 
mains in our Company to this day.”” A young noble was 
received in the Roman House and sent to a college in 
Sicily to escape the worldly importunity of his relatives. 
The uncle, who had friends among the cardinals, and who 
was a bishop, appealed to the Pope to order the young 
man back to Rome where his relatives could talk to him. 
The Pope answered: ‘Far be it from me to expose him 
to the danger of losing his soul through being persuaded 
to refuse to obey the call of God in his heart.’’* 

Ignatius felt that boys of fifteen, or nearly fifteen, were 
old enough to hear the call of God to give up ordinary 
life in the world and look forward to entering the Com- 
pany. If they were mistaken, he felt it would appear 
during the two years of their novitiate, or the long years 
of study at a university before they took the full vow. He 
believed that the danger of their making a mistake under 

* Letts. IV, 93. 


220 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the training and influence of the Company, was less than 
the danger of denying the call of God under the influence 
of parents more ambitious for their children in the things 
of this world than in the things of God. He refused a 
suggestion from Vienna to lower this limit of age set by 
the Constitutions, so as to admit from Germany boys be- 
tween twelve and fourteen; but said he would use his 
power of dispensation in special cases and give it to his 
correspondent.** It seems that in this matter of age he 
resisted the zeal of some of his followers, for he laid it 
down as a practical rule that “‘ a very tender age was an 
impediment to reception” and added “fifteen shall be 
considered a very tender age to admit even to probation.” *” 

The attitude of Ignatius, in this matter, was quite sim- 
ilar, only reversed, to the attitude of the Protestants, who 
strenuously justified resistance to parents on the part of 
children who did not wish to enter monasteries. It was a 
common practise in pre-reformation Germany for parents 
to force daughters into convents to avoid the expense of 
keeping them and giving them marriage portions. Luther 
preached one of his most powerful sermons against parents 
who cast their children into hell by vows they could not 
keep, as idolaters of old had thrown their children into 
the fire of Moloch. 

In defending the right of young people to choose for 
themselves between the call of God to join the Company 
and ordinary life, Ignatius was of course not taking/a 
position in the least new. He quoted Thomas Aquinas, 
Jerome and many other doctors of the Church on the 
sinfulness of trying to withdraw our fellow men from 
the path which led to a more perfect Christian life and 
a more complete service of God. Even in medizval times 
cases like the bitter opposition of the parents of St. Fran- 
cis of Assisi had been not uncommon. But the recruit- 
ing of Ignatius for his Company raised much more opposi- 

* Pol. IV, 252. * Letts. IV, 37. 


IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY 221 


tion. Times were changed. Not only had the Protestant 
schismatics renounced the whole monastic ideal, so that 
the monk Martin Luther deliberately and dramatically 
broke his vows by marrying a nun, but, even among ortho- 
dox Catholics, the monastic ideal of life no longer held 
its unique and powerful supremacy: as witness the in- 
frequency of new foundations and the cardinals who 
thought there were too many religious orders already. 

It is very difficult for most of us moderns to put our- 
selves in the place of men who felt that life in a religious 
order was undoubtedly a more perfect Christian life than 
any life in a family could possibly be. To resist the call 
of God to this higher life seemed to them the worst 
possible sort of religious apostasy. This is precisely 
what Ignatius and his followers believed with all their 
hearts. Hence, very naturally, they came to be afraid 
of family affection as a danger to that complete sur- 
render to doing the will of God and helping their neigh- 
bour, for which they strove. Not indeed that they bade 
any one neglect a family which imperatively needed him. 
Married men were not eligible to the Company. A man, 
not professed, who asked to be dismissed to help the needs 
of his family, was sent away in peace and afterwards re- 
admitted in the same grade. A Neapolitan who had taken | 
the vow was ordered by Ignatius, on the advice of the 
members of the Company in that city, to live at home 
because both of his parents were old and needed his help. 
‘He did so, subject to the call of the Company when his 
duty to his parents was over.*® But though they admitted 
family duty as a bar to service in the Company, they 
feared family affection as a danger to those whose hearts 
ought to be wholly given to God and man. 

Father Adrian was sent home by the physicians because 
he was dangerously ill. At the end of two months the 
physicians had done nothing for him and he went back 

Pol. III, 188; IV, 181. 


222 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


to the college, where, beginning with the very day he gave 
up the doctors and all their works, he began to enjoy the 
best health he had ever known in his life. During his 
stay at home, his sister and mother showed the greatest 
piety, confessing and taking communion every week. His 
sister, learning that certain books were needed for the 
students, bought them. His mother gave much money to 
the college and precious ornaments for the church, while 
other members of the family showed other signs of piety. 
“Nevertheless Father Adrian, knowing that domestic en- 
tanglements even with pious relatives ought to be guarded 
against like poison, returned as soon as possible to . 
Louvain.” *° There was a boy in the College of Valencia, 
extremely pious and very brilliant, who wished to go with 
Father Miron to Portugal. The head of the College would 
not let him go without the permission of his parents. 
They were unwilling to give permission but the boy, “using 
spiritual rhetoric brought them over so completely to his 
way of thinking that they begged Father Miron with tears 
to take him along. But when, with a placid and joyful 
face, he said goodbye to his mother, who was dissolved 
in tears, she cried out, ‘Oh, my dear son, don’t you know 
that I am your mother that you can leave me with a heart 
so untouched?’ The boy answered he left in order to 
serve God more perfectly and so he did it with a joyful 
mind. But when the boy said goodbye in our college 
to his spiritual brethren he wept copiously. Thus he 
caused all to admire the way in which he put off mere 
human affection as well as the way in which he put on 
spiritual affection.”* 

Such anecdotes as these, recording what they praised 
and what they feared, show better than pages of descrip- 
tion the attitude of Ignatius and his friends towards family 
affection. He who finally enlisted in the Company of 
Jesus must forget all other ties. To those who wished 


* Pol TL 59t: ™ Pol. Il; 351, 


IGNATIUS AS THE GENERAL OF THE COMPANY 223 


“to postpone or refuse the state of higher perfection, be- 
cause of carnal affection to please their parents,” they 
quoted the saying of Christ to the young man who wished 
to bury his father before following him: ‘Let the dead 
bury their dead,” and they pointed reluctant parents to 
the words: “He that loveth father or mother more than 
me is not worthy of me”; or: “if any man come to me 
and hate not his father and mother . . . and brethren 
and sisters . . . he cannot be my disciple.’’** As a sol- 
dier marching off to almost certain death for his country 
said a last goodbye to his family, so Ignatius wished his 
recruits to answer the call of their invisible Captain, leave 
behind them father and mother, brother and sister, and 
follow Him in a lifelong fight for God. 

Nevertheless, family feeling was so strong and wide 
spread that Ignatius found himself obliged to take 
practical account of it. Parents began to fear that the 
schools of the Company were used like nets to gather 
members and boys were taken out of schools, especially 
boys of noble families.” So Ignatius issued a rule that 
no one should be received as a novice from among the 
scholars in the colleges, without the consent of the parents; 
explaining that the loss suffered by parents withdrawing 
boys from the schools and their alienation from the Com- 
pany, would be greater than the gain from the admis- 
sion of their sons. This rule was enforced.** But Ignatius 
had a letter written to explain that little attention should 
be paid to the objections of a father, when the young man 
was not a student in one of the colleges of the Company, 
for the parents’ consent was not necessary in that case.** 

To the letter to superiors ordering that boys from the 
colleges of the Company should not be received without 
their parent’s consent, there was added this notable 
phrase: ‘And there will not be lacking ways of helping 


Orel y. 272; Letts, V, 167; Mt. X, 37; Luke XIV, 26. “Pol. IV, 583 V;, 
109, 1417. “Pol. II, 421; V, 114, 497. “Pol. III, 198; Letts. IV, 41. 


224 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the good desires of any one who wishes to enter the 
Company—sending them to other places or as God shall 
inspire.”’*° 

Allusion has already been made to the fact that many 
of those who have written about Ignatius with the motive, 
perhaps unconscious, not of giving a true picture of him, 
but of expressing their dissent from what he taught, are 
apt to accuse him of indirection. The phrase above is 
called notable because it seems to the writer unique in the 
letters sent out by Ignatius. There is nothing else in the 
original sources of his life which can be fairly or seriously 
cited to support a charge of indirection. Certain facts 
and letters in connection with the cases of Octavian, young 
Ricasoli ** of Florence, and others, arouse the strong sus- 
picion that the suggestion of this postscript was acted upon. 
That the suggestion was sent out with a good conscience 
appears not only from its last words, but also from the 
whole attitude of Ignatius in the matter. But its lack of 
frankness is as evident as the baselessness of the charge of 
craft brought against his conduct in general. 

“Letts. IV, 112; Pol. II, 421. “See note (14) to page 205. 


CHAPTER XV 
OBEDIENCE 


Monks of all orders bound themselves by vow to pov- 
erty, chastity and obedience. Ignatius wished to lay a 
special emphasis on the last of these monastic virtues. 
He wrote: “although all orders hold obedience to be neces- 
sary, we ought to desire particularly that the members 
of our Company should be distinguished by this virtue, 
because we do not match many other orders, either in the 
austerity of our dress, or in fastings, or in the mortifica- 
tions of our common way of life. Therefore we desire 
much in our Lord we shall all be truly distinguished 
by obedience and real abnegation of our own will and 
judgment.”* The most quoted of the phrases Ignatius 
employed in regard to this virtue which he called ‘“‘the 
firmest anchor of the soul,’”? are not particularly sig- 
nificant because they were stock figures of speech; often 
employed before him by monastic writers: for example 
they ought to let themselves be wielded entirely by their 
superiors “like a staff in the hand of an old man,” to 
assume a lack of personal choice about all things “like 
that of a dead body which goes wherever it is taken with- 
out any repugnance whatever.’ ® 

The ideas of Ignatius on obedience are to be found in 
his celebrated letter to the Jesuits of Portugal, thought 
by some of his followers ‘‘the most admirable of all which 


* Letts. II, 63, compare III, 509. *Letts. II, 57. * Letts. III, 502, Constitu- 
tions, VI, cap. 1. 
225 


226 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


came from his pen.” * Its teaching is supported by many 


citations from scripture and the fathers” and the latter 
show that no point in it was new. 

St. Benedict, who, in the sixth century, began the or- 
ganization of monasticism, wrote in his celebrated Rule: 
“When the monk receives a command he should obey it 
immediately as if it came from God himself.” Ignatius 
begins his explanation of obedience by saying that a su- 
perior should be obeyed not because he is good or wise 
but because he is our superior and as such he is to the 
man he commands, the Vicar of Christ. The first and 
lowest grade of obedience is execution, i.e. doing what 
is commanded; which does not deserve the name unless 
it is joined to obedience of the will. Whoso does not 
make this surrender makes his own will the measure of 
God’s, instead of making God’s will the measure of his. 
But entire and perfect obedience requires also the sur- 
render of the understanding, so that we not only wish the 
same thing as our superior, but think the same as he does 
(in the matter ordered) “subjecting our own judgment 
to his so far as the devoted will can control the under- 
standing. 

“Because, although the understanding has not the 
freedom of choice possessed by the will and naturally gives 
its assent to that which appears to it true, nevertheless, 
in many things wherein the evidence of known truth does 
not force it, the understanding may be inclined to one side 
or the other and, in such things, every obedient brother 
should incline himself to think what his superior thinks. 
Certainly, since obedience is a sacrifice in which the man, 
without any division of himself, offers his entire being 
in the fire of love to his Creator by the hand of His min- 
isters . . . it cannot be said that obedience comprises 
only doing what is commanded or contentment of the 
will in doing it. Obedience also includes the judgment; 

“ Astrain, 611. 5 Letts. IV, 669. 


a 


OBEDIENCE 227 


thinking what the superior orders so far (as has been 
said) as the mind can be inclined by the effort of the 
will. . . . Just as among the heavenly bodies there can 
be no movement without subordination of one body to 
another, so in the movement of a rational being by another 
(which is obedience) subordination is necessary for trans- 
ferring the influence and virtue from the mover to the 
moved and this cannot occur without conformity of will 
and understanding. 

“The understanding may be misled as well as the will. 
The scriptures say ‘Lean not upon thine own under- 
standing’ and also, in other human affairs, wise men know 
it is true wisdom not to trust one’s own wisdom. This 
counsel is even more necessary in regard to spiritual things 
and persons... 

“He who has not this obedience of judgment cannot 
have a perfect obedience which is to obey with love and 
joy. He loses perseverance, promptness and skill. He 
loses the much praised simplicity of blind obedience, ques- 
tioning in himself if the command is wise or unwise, per- 
haps blaming his superior because he commands that 
which is not to his mind. He loses humility and fortitude 
in difficult affairs. 

“Unless the understanding is subjected in obedience 
there arise discontent, pain, delay, slackness, murmuring, 
excuses, which rob obedience of its value and merit. 
“Lack of surrender of the judgment disturbs the peace 

and tranquillity of the one who obeys and differences of 
judgment disturb the peace and union of the congregation; 
hence St. Paul urges let all think and speak the same 
thing. 

“Finally to subject the judgment in obedience, is to 
offer to God the noblest of oblations: not keeping back 
anything of oneself and conquering by love for Him the 
natural inclination all men have to follow their own 
judgment. 


228 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


“Three rules will help towards this perfect obedience. 
First: Do not look on the superior as on a man subject 
to errors and miseries, but look at what you obey in the 
man, which is Christ the highest wisdom, the highest good- 
ness, infinite love; . . . so, using the inner eyes of the 
soul rather than the outer eyes, you will be able to con- 
form your will and judgment. 

“Second: Always be ready to look for reasons to de- 
fend what a superior orders, and not for disapproving it; 
third, assume that the order is in accord with God’s will 
and begin with enthusiasm to obey it.’’® 

The hopes Ignatius built on this virtue as the cor- 
nerstone of his work are seen very plainly in a stinging 
letter of rebuke he wrote not long before his death. A 
man who had been disciplined on account of lack of obedi- 
ence had kept badly the promise he made ‘‘to obey like 
a dead thing.” Evidently he had been talking about 
the interpretations and limits of the doctrine of obedience, 
saying that men “ought not to be homicides of themselves, 
etc.” “That,” burst forth Ignatius, “is the most per- 
nicious doctrine which can be taught for the union we 
seek in this Company and the perfection of obedience 
based on love. It has the power of the pestilence to infect 
quickly a whole college. That spirit is the very essence 
of pride of intellect and corrupts the entire simplicity and 
magnanimity of obedience. Its end is voluntary apostasy 
or being summarily dismissed to save others from infec- 
tion—however, so far as that is concerned, the Com- 
pany will consider the charity that may be shown towards 
an individual without danger to the general good.”” Fre- 
quent dismissals of novices and probationers shows how 
firmly he believed in the necessity of obedience.* 

The chronicler gives instances of the zeal with which 
novices tried to attain this perfect obedience. Once when 
a number of them were cleaning the mud from a street 

° Letts. IV, 669. "Letts. XI, 276. ®Pol. II, 169, 697. 


OBEDIENCE 229 


in front of a house, one said they had got down to solid 
bottom and another said they had not yet got toit. Their 
father superior who was present said they were on solid 
bottom “and then he who had just denied it said ‘We 
are on solid bottom and if you father say it is mud, I 
will confess it is mud.’ ”’® 

A novice of eighteen years lay dying and his brethren 
begged him to pray for them when he got to heaven. He 
said, ‘Yes, I will gladly do it if permission is given me to 
pray to Christ for you, for I shall not be able to enter 
the heavenly mansions nor to pray for you there without 
obedience to the Father in Heaven. Because if here in 
this world we must obey, how much more there, whence 
all obedience descends to us! ... and this purity, 
obedience and simplicity ours could not help but ardently 
admire.”’*° 

In one of the novice houses a young lad died ‘“‘who 
had set an example of great patience and obedience and 
at the end he did something of great edification by ask- 
ing from the master of the novices permission to die.’ 

A special attack has been made upon Ignatius for his 
teaching of obedience on the ground that at least by in- 
ference it obliged members of the Company to commit sin 
like theft or murder or perjury when ordered by their 
superiors. In the first place this, if it were true, would not 
be especially chargeable on Ignatius for his doctrine was 
not his invention—every point in it can be sustained by 
citations from the fathers of the Church. In the second 
place the charge is false. In the section of the Constitu- 
tions which treats of obedience he expressly repudiates the 
idea that his men are to obey a command to sin,” and he 
does the same in several of his letters; twice in the cele- 
brated letter on obedience.** There can be no doubt that 
if Ignatius had heard that any of his followers had drawn 


°Pol. V, 434. ™ Pol. II, 229. “Pol. IV, 198. “Part IV, Cap. 1. ™ Letts. I, 
228; III, 501. 


230 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


such a conclusion from his teaching, he would have echoed 
the judgment of Paul about those who sinned that grace 
might abound—‘“whose damnation is just.” (16) 

In spite of the fact that Ignatius found in the doctrine 
of obedience the spiritual basis for a government of his 
Company as absolute as that which a general and his 
hierarchy of officers impose upon an army in time of war, 
he was not a tyrant; even a benevolent one. He sought 
advice; though he had strict ideas about the way it should 
be offered to a superior. When Lainez whom he chose as 
his successor, wrote ‘‘a little freely” criticizing the with- 
drawal of needed men from provincial colleges to 
strengthen Rome, Ignatius was much displeased and re- 
plied, pointing out that he had preferred local good to 
general good, and admonishing him to think the matter 
over until he had realized his fault and, when he had real- 
ized it, to write what penance he was prepared to undergo. 
Lainez replied thanking Ignatius for the correction and 
begging to be used wherever he was needed. Meantime 
he proposed, “with many tears,” three penances, all so 
heavy that Ignatius would not impose any of them. Nor 
did he impose any other; accepting this humble self con- 
demnation of Lainez as an ample penance for his fault.“ 

Later he wrote rules on the ‘“‘Way to Consider a Sub- 
ject or Negotiate any Matter with Superiors,” which 
made evident that he by no means wished to shut out the 
offering of information or advice by inferiors who had re- 
ceived orders; but only to forbid beginning a discussion 
in the place of doing what one was told to do.” 

As years went on Ignatius came to dislike ‘‘innovations” 
in the Company and he seems to have had a natural 
liking for uniformity even in details; but he was free 
from the weakness of those rulers of men who trust no 
one’s judgment but their own and so want to do every- 
thing themselves. He frequently noted that things he 

™ Pol, III, 61. Letts, IX, 90, 93. 


OBEDIENCE 231 


suggested were only by way of advice and not ordered by 
his authority as general which it was sinful to disobey.*® 
At other times after expressing his opinion, he adds, 
‘Nevertheless I leave the matter to your prudent con- 
sideration.”*’ An old father recalling how he begged 
Ignatius for minute instructions when he was sending him 
to become rector of a distant college, wrote that Ignatius 
replied “‘Oliver, do as you think best: fit the rules to 
the place the best way you can.’ And when I begged 
to know how to distribute the staff he was sending with 
me, he answered with few words ‘Oliver, cut your coat 
according to your cloth and your needs.’ ”’*® 

“In the same way our Father wished the provincials to 
have in their provinces all the liberty possible in govern- 
ing them.”’® When he sent Nadal as special envoy to 
Spain and Portugal, he gave him a number of blanks sealed 
and signed with permission to write over the signature any 
letter, private or public, he might believe to be useful in 
the Lord.”’ He was very insistent that by the virtue of 
obedience men expecting to be assigned to duty should 
be entirely ready to go cheerfully anywhere they were 
sent, but, in making his assignments, he carefully con- 
sidered not only the aptitudes but the inclinations of his 
men.” For Ignatius did not look on obedience as an iron 
rule to crush individuals into a mass. He meant it to be 
a spiritual grace to unite the hearts and minds of men 
whose individuality was highly developed, into a living 
organism devoted with a single will to a common object: 
the service and glory of God and the helping of their 
neighbours. 

The celebrated letter on Obedience of which a brief 
paraphrase has been given was addressed to the ‘‘Com- 
rades of Portugal.” It was called forth by the gravest 
internal difficulties which Ignatius had to face in gov- 


*° Pol. III, 440; Letts. V, 127. * Letts. V, 674. 7®Scripta, I, 519. * Scripta, 
I, 285, Memoriale. * Pol. III, 439. ** Scripta, I, 209, Memoriale. 


232 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


erning the Company. Those difficulties were caused by 
the character and conduct of the only one of his nine first 
fathers who ever acted disloyally toward him. Nothing 
can show more plainly that the discipline of Ignatius, 
though severe was not heartless or iron clad, than his 
conduct toward Father Simon Rodriguez; guilty not only 
of forgetting the spirit of the Company but even the 
sense of honour and the feeling of affection toward an 
old friend. Indeed the attitude of Loyola towards this 
disobedient son is so indulgent as to suggest at one point 
to one of his recent biographers the question, ‘“How can 
this letter so opposed to the habitual prudence of our holy 
Father be explained?”” 

Simon Rodriguez started for India with Xavier, but 
was detained in Portugal by the King, over whom he soon 
came to exercise considerable influence. Ignatius allowed 
him to act for six years as if he were provincial of Por- 
tugal. Although some disquieting reports had come to 
Rome during this period about the Company in Por- 
tugal, Ignatius appointed Simon Rodriguez provincial of 
that country in 1546. The year before, he had called 
Simon to Rome. But the King so strongly opposed his 
leaving that Ignatius, who never unnecessarily opposed 
the highest civil or ecclesiastical authorities, rescinded the 
call. Five years later Simon joined some of the principal 
fathers assembled at Rome to give advice about the Con- 
stitutions Ignatius was writing. 

Outwardly the Company in Portugal, its first province, 
was extremely flourishing. It had two well established 
colleges and three hundred and eighteen Portuguese had 
entered its ranks in eleven years.“ But Ignatius was 
troubled by what he heard from the inside and not pleased 
with the spirit shown by Simon; who went back to Por- 
tugal in the spring of 1551. At the end of the year 
Ignatius felt certain that he ought to be removed from 


* Astrain, 614. *TLetts. I, 449. 74 Astrain, 586. 


OBEDIENCE 233 


Portugal. To do this easily, he divided Spain into two 
provinces, Castile and Aragon, and ordered Simon to take 
charge of Aragon. Then he appointed Father Miron as 
the Provincial of Portugal. Ignatius sent Dr. Torres as 
his personal representative with full powers to carry out 
these changes. In case Simon did not want to go to 
Aragon, he was to be allowed to go to the Brazilian 
mission; as he had asked two years before. The King 
was now willing to let him leave. But Simon Rodriguez 
said that his health would not permit him to go to Brazil 
or to Aragon and so he had determined to stay in retire- 
ment in Portugal. Dr. Torres, who had kept in the back- 
ground, now filled out one of the signed blanks given him 
by Ignatius with orders to Simon to go to Aragon at 
once “by virtue of holy obedience.” The King backed 
this by a letter and the reluctant Simon had to go. 
Unfortunately Father Miron, who had been sent to Por- 
tugal by Ignatius to succeed Simon, although a man of 
very great piety, proved himself incapable of government. 
He was stern, impetuous, changeable, without tact or 
judgment and he helped the splitting up of the Company 
which had already begun. There were scores of ex- 
Jesuits; almost all talking against the Company. Simon 
himself by letters secretly furnished one of his chief ad- 
herents outside the Company with slanders against 
Ignatius.” These slanders accused Ignatius of being a 
man of worldly ambition, who had used the wealth of the 
' Duke of Borgia (recently admitted to the Company) for 
the benefit of his family. They went on to say that 
he drew money out of Portugal, that he sent the ablest 
sons of Portugal to other countries and replaced them 
by novices and foreign students who would never be of 
any national use. These calumnies made considerable 
impression at court until they were disproved. The harm 
done to the ideals of Ignatius may be indicated to some 


* Astrain, 601, note 2. 


234 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


extent by figures. The province had sent a number of 
missionaries to Brazil and India, but, when these troubles 
became acute the Company in Portugal still numbered 
some two hundred and fifty. When it was over, about one 
hundred and thirty members in various grades had left or 
had been dismissed. 

When the situation was at its worst Simon got per- 
mission from Ignatius, on the ground of feeble health, to 
go back to Portugal. None of the houses of the Com- 
pany would receive him and he spent his time on the 
- estate of a powerful patron, the Duke of Aveiro. 

In May 1553 Ignatius summoned Simon to Rome “by 
virtue of holy obedience.” Two months later, having 
heard nothing, he wrote again, a gentle and affectionate 
letter urging him to come. At the same time he sent to 
the provincial, documents enabling him to give Simon 
three warnings and then if he did not obey, to dismiss 
him from the Company.” If Simon said he was ill, com- 
petent physicians of the order of St. Dominic were to be 
consulted. At last they got him started and, six months 
after he was first summoned, he arrived at Rome. 
Ignatius gave him a cordial welcome and the best apart- 
ment in the house. He would have been willing to bury 
the past in silence, but the hard headed Simon insisted 
that his conduct should be examined solemnly by four 
fathers.” Several of the fathers who had been in Por- 
tugal had for more than five years suspected that he was 
led astray by ‘el demonio,”’** and they gave testimony by 
word and letter. The commission of inquiry—it might 
almost be called a court martial—decided that he was 
guilty of undue confidence in his own judgment; unedify- 
ing self indulgence and luxury in living, ambition, etc.” 
The evidence to sustain their judgment, and even a charge 
of deliberate personal disloyalty, is abundant. They im- 


* Scripta, I, 674, 675. ™ Astrain, 627, Note. “Scripta, I, 667. ™ Scripta, 
I, 677. 


OBEDIENCE 235 


posed a penance that he should write letters to Portugal 
acknowledging his faults to several named people within 
and without the Company, that he should never go back 
to Portugal, that he should say every day the Lords 
Prayer and Ave Maria asking God to pardon his pride 
and disobedience, that every week for seven years, unless 
his health was too feeble, he should say a mass for Por- 
tugal and inflict strict discipline on himself, that for two 
years he should fast once a week and converse with no 
one outside of the list given to him.*” Of this penance 
which the fathers judged very small, Ignatius remitted all 
but the first part.** To accompany Simon’s letters of 
penitence, he wrote a circular letter to say that his dear 
son, although he had failed in some things, had acted with- 
out evil intentions. He added, “From his conversation 
and company, I have every day more and more satis- 
faction.” 

This satisfaction could not have lasted very long, for 
Simon began to complain of Ignatius and he also savagely 
attacked his judges.** Ignatius confined him to the house 
and sent to Naples for Salmerén and to Ancona for 
Bobadilla, hoping that these old comrades of Paris 
would bring him to a better frame of mind. But Simon 
treated them little better..* He appealed to the Pope 
for a dispensation to spend two years as a hermit with 
the intention of choosing a hermitage near Lisbon. This 
was blocked with the help of a letter from the Ambassador 
of Portugal, to the Pope, saying that the King did not 
want Simon in Portugal. Simon then tried to persuade 
Ignatius to give him permission to go to Portugai because 
his health demanded his native air. Ignatius refused, but 
gladly gave him permission to make a pilgrimage to Jeru- 
salem. Simon changed his mind again and Ignatius sent 
him to Venice with permission, if he wished, to spend 


Scripta, I, 678. “Scripta, I, 680. ™Scripta, I, 680. “Scripta, I, 681. 
“Scripta, I, 681, 683. 


236 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the summer at Monreale in Sicily ‘“‘which is the best air 
and the most beautiful position of all the establishments 
of the Company.” Simon showed a very bad temper. 
He opened letters addressed to others, ‘‘an act very evil 
even among secular people,” and wrote Ignatius a sour 
rather insulting letter.*° In short he acted like a wilful 
and pettish child. Ignatius continued to treat him like an 
affectionate modern parent who believed the trouble had 
some physical nervous root. Certainly the attitude of 
Ignatius toward Simon is in marked contrast to his severity 
at the very same time to his old comrade Lainez and his 
faithful helpers, Polanco and Nadal. It may be con- 
jectured that he feared lest harshness might drive Simon 
into apostasy and the loss of his soul. As a matter of fact, 
Simon Rodriguez did good service to the Company for 
more than twenty years after the death of Ignatius: 
eight in Italy, twelve in Spain and the last years in 
Portugal. 

He did such good service that, when a candid account 
of his conduct was printed in 1616, the Jesuits of Por- 
tugal were very much scandalized and wrote protesting 
to the editor of the book in which it appeared.*® He wrote 
a reply in regard to the duty of the historian which ought 
to be rescued from oblivion, because it sets forth so clearly 
the danger of that willingness to be edifying at the ex- 
pense of frankness, which has been the curse of religious 
history and biography; Protestant fully as much as Cath- 
olic. He says complaint may be made of a historian 
either because the things he relates are not true, or be- 
cause even if they were true, they ought not to have been 
told. Under the first head he points out that the things 
objected to rest on the written testimony of seventeen 
named witnesses of the highest character. Under the 
second head he says, “If things are true no historian can, 


* Scripta, I, 698. 
* Father Sacchini publishing the manuscript of Father Orlandini. 


OBEDIENCE 237 


without violating the laws of history and his own con- 
science, keep silent about them. . . . The reason is that 
since the essence of history is to narrate outstanding 
things either good or evil, . . . (which in the case of a 
biography help to form a true judgment of the man) 
he who publishes a history relating only good things 
writes himself down as willing to deceive. . . . Truth is 
rightly called the soul of history. If she is absent because 
writers keep silent about what should be told, history dies. 
For it is against the truth not to say those things which 
ought to be said.” *” 
* Scripta, I, 703. 


CHAPTER XVI 
THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 


Perhaps the effort of the Company of Jesus which 
finally exercised the greatest influence was their work 
in education. Long before Ignatius thought of founding 
the Company he believed in the necessity of education 
for those who desired to help their fellowmen. At the 
age of thirty-three he joined small boys in the study of 
Latin grammar and spent the next eleven years of his life 
in gaining a university education. He found his first 
comrades at the universities and he looked for them no- 
where else. 

In spite of Ignatius’ evident inclination toward learn- 
ing, the germinal idea of founding a network of colleges 
came not from him but from Lainez,* and the famous 
Ratio Studiorum or method of the Jesuits was formed 
more than fifty years after the death of Ignatius.” He 
saw only the beginnings of Jesuit education. At his death, 
the Company had nine schools and colleges in India and 
America and about thirty-five in Europe.2 Two hun- 
dred years later, there were seven hundred and twenty- 
eight Jesuit universities, colleges and schools attended by 
some 200,000 pupils.* 

Although Ignatius did not suggest the beginning of 
this great educational system, nor establish its final form, 
he left his impress upon it. 

The ideas about education which he approved are to 
be seen in the fourth part of the Constitutions, which 


1Scripta, I, 220. * Hughes, 154. *Pol. VI, 42. * Hughes, 70, 74. 
238 


THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 239 


occupies a quarter of that document. It is characteristic 
of Ignatius that it is not labelled ‘On Education” but 
“Of the Means of Instructing those who are Kept in the 
Company, in Letters and other Means of Helping their 
Neighbours.”’ The preamble sets forth that, as the object 
of the Company is to aid the souls of their neighbours, 
not only a good example, but knowledge of doctrine and 
skill in teaching it, are needed in its members. There- 
fore, as soon as young men have shown that they have 
the foundation of self denial and growth in virtue, the 
next step must be to give them knowledge and train them 
to use it. 

The comment goes on to explain that it is very difficult 
to recruit for the Company among men already educated. 
Because most learned men want ease after they have 
gotten their education and are frightened away by the 
great labour and self denial required of members. So it 
seems best to admit young lads who by their good habits 
and abilities give hope of becoming both virtuous and 
learned enough to work in the vineyard of Christ. 

The core of the students are those under vows, but poor 
students who do not look forward to joining the Com- 
pany may be received if they suggest good hopes that they 
may make workers in the vineyard of the Lord. The con- 
venient age is from fourteen to twenty-three. 

The spiritual training of probationers must be carefully 
looked to, so that on the one hand, zeal for learning 
does not make them slack in their religious life, nor on the 
other hand, prayers or meditation take too much time 
from study. They must study humane letters in various 
languages including rhetoric, logic, metaphysics, natural 
and moral philosophy, and then go on to scholastic and 
positive (patristic) theology and holy writ. Orderly prog- 
ress in the sciences should be arranged. Holy writ may 
be studied with or after positive theology. When the 
languages in which the Bible was written are studied, one 


240 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


of the objects set before the learners shall be the defense 
of the translations approved by the Church. 

At least every Sunday, leaders appointed by the rectors 
shall briefly defend propositions they have posted the day 
before and anyone, either from the house or outside, may 
take part in the debate. All, but especially the students of 
liberal arts, must ordinarily speak Latin and once a week 
after dinner, one of the most skilful must make an address 
in Latin or Greek. Students, who cannot learn or do 
not want to, should not be allowed to waste their time. 
They must be sent from college and replaced by others 
who will profit by their opportunities. 

Students from outside ought to be instructed in Chris- 
tian doctrine, to go to confession every month and fre- 
quently to hear sermons; in short be trained not only in 
letters but in habits worthy of a Christian. 

Much emphasis is laid on training the probationer schol- 
ars for their future work in helping their neighbours. 
They should have practice in preaching and public read- 
ing of the scripture; they should be shown how to teach 
Christian doctrine to children, etc. ‘They should be 
taught to help their neighbours to die well and what 
Should be done in that crisis which may achieve or lose 
the final end of eternal happiness . . . They should be 
instructed how to adapt themselves to a great variety of 
persons and warned against possible mistakes. For al- 
though that wise tact can only be taught by the Holy 
Spirit... it is at least possible to give hints which 
help and prepare for the result which the grace of God 
must bring about.” ® 

According to the papal bulls the superintendence of the 
colleges is in the hands of the professed of the Company 
whose executive is the general. He appoints the rectors 
from among the spiritual coadjutors (a professed might 


®It is easy to guess that these paragraphs came from Ignatius; that skilful 
fisher of men. 


THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 241 


be rector only temporarily). A rector’s first duties are 
to sustain the morale of his college by prayer and holy 
desires and to see that the Constitutions are kept: there- 
fore he is advised to read the part concerning colleges 
publicly two or three times a year. He appoints all 
officers of the college and, with the help of a council, pro- 
vides for everything. 

About a third of the part devoted to educational estab- 
lishments is given to the universities Ignatius hoped the 
Company would some day manage. 

Theology is the study which best prepares a man to help 
the souls of his neighbours. The principal effort of the 
universities of the Company should therefore be to have 
very good teachers of scholastic and positive theology and 
the sacred scriptures, but without trying to teach eccle- 
siastical law. ‘Because the use of theology in these days 
demands a good knowledge of humane letters and of Latin, 
Greek and Hebrew, there should be good teachers of these 
subjects. . . . The natural sciences prepare the mind for 
the perfect understanding of theology and they also should 
be taught together with logic, metaphysics and mathe- 
matics. As medicine and law have little to do with the 
objects of the Company these faculties shall not be in- 
cluded in its universities.” 

Attention must be paid to the formation of Christian 
habits by the students of the universities. No student not 
under vows is to be compelled to attend religious exercises, 
but all lectures must be opened with prayer and every oc- 
casion which arises for exhortation to love and serve God 
is to be improved by the lecturers. The vicious or lazy 
are to be punished, the incorrigible dismissed. Every year 
each member of the council shall write to the general a 
letter about the rector, and twice each year similar letters 
must be sent to the provincial. Every third year all mem- 
bers of the Company at a university, down to the grade 
of approved scholars, shall write about all the others, 


242 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


and the rector. These letters must be sealed so that no 
one knows what the others have written. 

There are a number of details about the management 
of the colleges which Ignatius learned by experience. 
Some of these are mentioned in the Constitutions and some 
not. It was found best not to be too ready ‘‘to send schol- 
ars who made trouble in one college to another,” and not 
to mix novices and ordinary scholars, nor allow outsiders to 
teach in the schools of the Company.® Students should 
not be allowed to beg for the care of the poor, nor to en- 
gage in any good work which interfered with their studies. 
Students unable to read and write were never to be ad- 
mitted. Nor was Ignatius willing to allow the Company 
to be saddled with responsibility for foundations so small 
as to be hopelessly inferior. Not long before his death 
he wrote to Lainez, ‘Speaking truly it is impossible to call 
any thing even a mediocre college, which has not at least 
two priests, three or four masters and two assistants, to- 
gether with two servants, in all ten at least.”* (17) The 
expenses of these institutions were much reduced by the 
fact that their staff received no salaries except their food 
and lodging. 

There was one item however on the budget of some 
Jesuit colleges which does not appear in that of any 
modern institution of learning: the salary of the corrector 
or whipper. In those days the rod was regarded as a nec- 
essary and normal instrument of education, and Ignatius 
believed, like most people of his own and succeeding gen- 
erations, that boys could not be properly educated without 
it. But he also forbade any member of the Company 
to punish a student.” 

This rule was strictly enforced. In the College of Na- 
ples one of the teachers lost his temper in class and whip- 
ped a student with his own hands, instead of telling him 
to go to the corrector. His superior ordered him as a pen- 

*Pol. III, 161-166. "Letts. V, 733. ° Pol. III, 23. 


THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 243 


ance to eat his meals sitting on the floor and to drink 
only water. The penitent, who had been weak and unwell 
for a while before the incident, went to his rector and said 
he conscientiously felt that drinking nothing but water 
would impair his health. He was told that obedience 
would serve him instead of medicine. So he drank water. 
This not only did not harm but rather helped him so much 
that he became strong and well ‘which thing ought 
strongly to commend to everybody the advantage of car- 
rying out strictly all imposed penances.’® There were 
two ways to get around the difficulty about the use of the 
indispensable rod. ‘The first was to employ a corrector 
from outside the Company to do the whipping. But cor- 
rectors were hard to find. In Modena, though the bishop 
spoke to several about it and offered them a salary, none 
could be found to exercise the office which was considered 
somewhat like that of an executioner.*° Ignatius had also 
suggested appointing a student corrector. But when they 
tried that in some places the parents of the boys whipped 
objected. In other places the boys objected still more. At 
Venice a student chased with a drawn knife the fellow 
student appointed to whip him and at another college, 
when several boys had been whipped by their fellows, 
they came the next day armed to avenge the insult in 
blood.* But in spite of all difficulties Ignatius continued 
to insist that it was “‘very indecent and improper for a 

member of the Company to punish any scholar with his 
_ own hands.”’” 

The schedule of work in Jesuit colleges in the days of 
Ignatius would start an insurrection in the average Ameri- 
can college today, but it was probably mild in comparison 
to other institutions. Here for instance is the programme 
at the College of Montaigu, the first Ignatius attended 
in Paris. At 4 arise, 5 to 6 lesson, at 6 mass followed 
by breakfast, 7 to 8 recreation, 8 to 10 lesson, 10 to 11 dis- 


Ore ii, 525, Pol 111, 150°e. g. ™ Pol. IVy'127, Tp 36) *iLetts:/o<) 403. 


244 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


cussion and argumentation, 11 dinner, during which the 
Bible or the life of a saint was read aloud, 12 to 2 
revision of lessons, 2 to 3 recreation, 3 to 5 lesson, 5 to 6 


argumentation and discussion, 6 supper, 624 examination © 


of day’s work, 8 in winter, or 9 in summer, bed.” 

The directions in the Constitutions frequently repeated 
in letters to rectors, to see that the students had sleep 
enough and were not overworked, imply a programme 
somewhat less grinding than this. Besides, the scholars of 
the Company had great advantages over the unfortunate 
pupils at Montaigu which had two nicknames: one was 
Bean College and the other was Flea College. Rabelais, 
an old student, gives a vivid description of what these 
names meant. Even more revealing is this tragic record 
from a petition for amendment written by Jean Boulaese, 
professor of Hebrew at Montaigu. A “poor” drowned 29 
Jan. 1573. A “rich” threw himself out of a window 16 
April 1573. A porter killed by blows and another badly 
wounded, 14 May 1573. A “poor” goes mad, 2 June 
1573. Another “rich” jumps out of the window, 8 July 
1573. And on the 25th of October others are beaten into 
illness and death.” 

Ignatius was very insistent on care for cleanliness and 
sufficient food and he set the example by his careful in- 
spection of the Roman establishments. When he saw from 
the reports an increase in cases of illness in any college, he 
ordered a careful revision by physicians of all the condi- 
tions of living; including the dietary. 

The care for morals in the colleges of the Company was 
real and never formal; whereas, at many colleges, there 
is strong reason to suspect that outward strictness masked 
great laxity. At Sainte Barbe at Paris, while Xavier was 
there, a knot of students went out frequently on debauches 
led by one of the masters, who finally died of syphilis. 

Lefranc, p. 65, cited Félibien. ™ Godet, 296. 


THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 245 


The strict supervision of Jesuit colleges rendered such a 
condition hardly possible. 

No tuition fees could be charged and Ignatius would 
accept no foundation for a college unless it provided for 
the entire expenses of a certain number of scholars. 
Modern governments use the same principle of free in- 
struction and living expenses in providing for a succession 
of trained men to fill the higher ranks of their armies. 
Most Protestant denominations in America use a system 
of scholarships and fellowships in recruiting for their min- 
istry and a large percentage of the students in our theolo- 
gical seminaries do not pay either tuition or their living ex- 
penses. It may be conjectured that the ideal of Ignatius 
for his colleges would have been to fill them with selected 
students who paid nothing for living or studying there. 
But he found difficulties, not simply about getting money 
enough—from the beginning the Company found wealthy 
and generous friends and patrons—but also because grati- 
tude compelled him to receive the sons of these friends and 
patrons. So, apparently rather reluctantly, this permis- 
sion was given in the Constitutions, ‘sometimes, for good 
reasons, the sons of rich or noble parents may be admitted 
to the colleges when their parents pay their expenses.” *° 

That paragraph became the basis of the establishment, 
in response to a growing demand, of boarding colleges, 
which finally impaired the gratuitous character of Jesuit 
education. Such a change would perhaps have been in- 
evitable, simply because of the enormous spread of the 
system; for it would hardly have been possible to main- 
tain more than seven hundred establishments with over 
two hundred thousand students, on a purely gratuitous 
basis. 

This fact that Ignatius and his comrades intended their 
colleges to train men for the Company, and, in the case 
of outside pupils, to form good workers in the vineyard of 

* Board and lodging only. 


246 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the Lord, must be kept in mind by those who wish to un- 
derstand them. They were exclusively teaching institu- 
tions. Nowhere in the Constitutions is there the smallest 
suggestion that the faculties must try to be investigators or 
discoverers of truth. Indeed the writer is unable to recall 
in the letters and works of Ignatius or the reports of his 
conversation by his friends, a single phrase which suggests 
a hope that new truth was to be discovered. He did indeed 
once recommend the scholastic theologians as better fitted 
than the patristic fathers ‘‘to define for our time the things 
necessary for our salvation because they are more mod- 
ern.” ** But of the three doctors he cited as examples of 
“more modern” teachers, two had been dead over two hun- 
dred and fifty years and the third nearly four hundred 
years. 

Acquaviva, who in the closing years of the sixteenth 
century succeeded Ignatius as general, laid down in the 
new “Method of Studies” this rule. ‘Let no one de- 
fend any opinion which is judged by the generality of 
learned men to go against the received tenets of phil- 
osophers and theologians or the common consent of theo- 
logical schools.” ‘This order would make all teachers in- 
structors only in ‘definite matter,” which is judged by 
other men to be in accord with tradition in philosophy 
and theology.’ Whether this is wise or not ought not 
to be here discussed. But it ought to be pointed out that 
this later rule is undoubtedly in accord with the ideal and 
spirit of Ignatius. 

The object of Loyola then in founding a college was 
not at all the search for new truth. It was exclusively the 
defense of old truth. Intellectually this son of Basque 
nobles was by inheritance, by temperament, by experience 
and training a typical conservative. His lack of interest 
in the discovery of truth was caused by his absolute cer- 

% Spiritual Exercises, Regulae 554. ™” Hughes, 149. 


THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 247 


tainty that the Church had all necessary truth, and his 
consequent absorption in spreading or defending it. 

But this extreme conservative on the theoretical side 
was, on the practical side, inclined to be an innovator. 
We have seen the innovations he introduced into the Com- 
pany and how they were attacked by men who were more 
conservative than he; because they feared not only any 
truth which claimed to be new, but any custom or method 
which was new. This willingness of Ignatius to adopt new 
methods if his reason or experience commended them to 
his judgment, appears in his ideas about his colleges, 
under circumstances which make his frank adoption of 
a new method very surprising in a man of his extreme 
conservative position. 

Ignatius always retained ‘‘respect and love for that uni- 
versity which was the mother of the first fathers of the 
Company.” ** It was known that Paris was a very expen- 
Sive university. For instance a student wrote that he was 
paying more just for his room “and a little dirty one at 
that,” in Paris, than he could live for luxuriously at the 
University of Louvain in the Netherlands. Nevertheless 
Ignatius wrote from Paris to his brother, who was con- 
sidering sending a younger son to a university: “Don’t 
think about the cost. You gain on it in this university be- 
cause the lad will learn more here in four years than in 
any other in six.’’*® 

To anyone reading the chronicle of the early Jesuits 
it is evident that Ignatius got at Paris most of his ideas 
about methods of teaching” and it must have been there 
that he learned to prefer the methods of the New Learn- 
ing to those of the Old Learning. 

Some readers may be glad to have a further definition 
of terms perfectly clear in the days of Ignatius. Before 
the beginning of the fourteenth century a movement is 
visible in the records of human taste, feeling and thought 

® Letts. IX, 451; XI, 452. “Letts. I, 78. *° Editors of Polanco, III, 243 n. 


248 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


which, it is commonly assumed, found its first conscious 
leader in Petrarch, who died something over a century 
before Ignatius was born. He was a strenuous critic of 
the methods of education his generation had inherited— 
the so-called scholastic system. His followers, called 
humanists in distinction from the scholastics, became, to- 
gether with their artist friends, one of the chief influences 
in what historians have come to speak of as the Renas- 
cence; meaning a rebirth of the human spirit, a more 
complete consciousness of individuality, a new sense of 
the beauty of the world we live in and the value of the 
life we live in it, a love of classic art and literature, a 
revival of the critical impulse, which inevitably came into 
conflict with the ascetic ideal of the middle ages. 

Ignatius learned, by reading the lives of the medizval 
saints, the medizval ascetic ideal and for a time practised 
it fully. But when he founded the Company, he forbade 
rules imposing ascetic practices. It would however be a 
very great mistake to attribute this change of attitude 
toward asceticism to the influence of the spirit of the 
Renascence. To the spirit of the Renascence in general he 
was totally opposed. The change in his attitude toward 
extreme ascetic practices, came simply from his prac- 
tical judgment. He learned by experience, as he wrote 
to Theresa Rejadella fifteen years after his conversion, 
“with a healthy body you can do much, with a weak body 
I do not know what you can do.” 

The struggle between the New Learning of the human- 
ists and the Old Learning of the scholastics was one special 
phase of the conflict of the spirit of the Renascence with 
medievalism. The old orders, especially the Dominicans 
and Franciscans who at the time of Ignatius’ birth fur- 
nished many of the professors of the universities of 
Europe, were the leaders in the defense of the Old Learn- 
ing and they were always ready to denounce their antag- 

"Letts. I, 108, compare II, 235. 


THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 249 


onists as heretics and threaten them with the stake. But 
the New Learning found powerful protectors. By the 
middle of the fifteenth century, it had won the ear of all 
the princes of the Italian states; and popes friendly to it 
like Nicholas IV and Pius II began to appear on the throne 
of St. Peter. In the sixteenth century the rulers of the 
great transalpine states became its-patrons. Cardinal 
Ximenes, regent of Castile, Maximilian, Emperor of Ger- 
many, his grandson, Charles V, Henry the Eighth of Eng- 
land, the “Defender of the Faith,” Francis I of France, 
etc. In short, long before the middle of the sixteenth 
century, the New Learning was the mode. This did not 
happen without desperate battles on the part of the advo- 
cates of the Old Learning and the question came to a point 
over the place to be given to the study of languages. 

In Germany, early in the sixteenth century, the Do- 
minicans attempted to get an order from the Emperor 
that all Hebrew books except those in the Bible, should 
be destroyed. When Reuchlin, the first German to know 
Hebrew thoroughly well, objected, they threatened him 
with the stake and after a long struggle the case against 
him was quashed at Rome. All higher instruction was 
given in Latin, but the scholastics had grown indifferent 
to its quality. The three languages therefore, Latin, 
Greek and Hebrew, became the banner of the New Learn- 
ing. At the birth of Petrarch (1304) there were few 
born west of the Adriatic who knew Greek and when its 
study began to prevail north of the Alps the men of 
the Old Learning were especially opposed to it. Sir 
Thomas More, Chancellor of England, wrote to Oxford 
this letter: 

_ “YT heard lately that either in some fools’ frolic or from 
your dislike to the study of Greek, a clique had been 
formed among you calling themselves Trojans and that 
the object was to throw ridicule on the Greek language 
and literature. .. . I have been informed that one of 


250 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


these Trojans has been preaching sermons denouncing 
not only Greek classics but Latin classics too and all lib- 
eral education. A fool’s speech comes out of a fool’s 
head. . . . He calls those who study Greek heretics. The 
teachers of Greek he says are full grown devils, the learn- 
ers of Greek are little devils. . . . It is not for me, illus- 
trious doctors, to defend Greek. . . . The finest writings 
on all subjects are in Greek. . . . The New Testament 
was written in Greek. . . . The King’s Majesty, our Sov- 
ereign, has himself more learning than any English sov- 
ereign ever possessed before him. Think you that he will 
look on in silence when worthless blockheads are inter- 
rupting the cause of sound instruction in the oldest uni- 
versity in this realm? . . . Your wisdoms therefore will 
find means to silence these foolish contentions.” The 
patrons of the New Learning took positive steps to sup- 
port it. The Emperor Charles V called Erasmus, to form 
at Louvain “a college of the three languages.” ‘The Car- 
melites tried in vain to block it and declared publicly, 
“Luther has fallen into his terrible heresies by studying 
the New Learning.” In 1517 Francis I asked Erasmus 
to come to Paris to found a college of the three languages 
like that at Louvain. The King’s plans were delayed but 
in 1530 he made the beginnings of the College de France 
by establishing lectureships in the three languages. The 
faculty of the Sorbonne opposed the plan as long as they 
dared and indirectly attacked it in the following utter- 
ances. “First proposition: The holy scripture cannot 
be well understood without Hebrew and Greek. Censure. 
This proposition is rash and scandalous. Second proposi- 
tion: A preacher cannot truly explain the epistles or the 
gospels without the said languages. Censure. This 
proposition is false and impious. Either of these prop- 


= Jortin, III, App. LXIII No. VIII, Froude’s translation. 
*4 Froude, Erasmus, 287, 266 cited. 


THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 251 


ositions renders him who asserts it extremely suspect of 
Lutheranism.”™ 

Now it would have been quite consistent with his atti- 
tude in general if Ignatius had been frightened away 
from the New Learning by this battle. For he was ex- 
tremely suspicious of heresy and very much afraid of its 
influence. 

This appears very plainly in his attitude toward books. 
Camara writes “Ignatius himself told me that, when he 
was a student at Alcala his confessor advised him to read 
‘The Christian Soldier’s Handbook’ of Erasmus. But 
he would not do it, because he had heard some preachers 
and persons in authority blame that author. So he an- 
swered that there were plenty of books of whose authors 
no one said any evil.” *° (18) He prohibited the books 
of Savonarola in the Company. To one who asked why, 
he wrote, the reason was “not that some of his books were 
not good—like ‘The Triumph of the Cross’ and others— 
but because the author is a subject of controversy. Some 
hold him for a saint, others think he was justly burnt; 
and that is the more common opinion. So the Company, 
inasmuch as there are so many good books free from all 
controversy, does not wish to use controverted authors: 
It does not however condemn them or even blame them.””* 

This natural tendency to keep away from everything 
suspected of heresy, must have been emphasized, so far 
as the denounced New Learning was concerned, by what 
Ignatius saw in Paris during his student days. There were 
few scholars among those burnt by Francis I. But those 
who fled the University, like Cop, the Rector of Sainte 
Barbe, and John Calvin, were all humanists. Indeed it 
was commonly said at the time “qui graecizabant, luther- 
anizabant”;—those who became interested in Greek be- 
came interested in Lutheranism.’”’ It seems like the final 


4 Lefranc, Le Collége de France, 122. * Scripta, I, 201, Memoriale. *™ Letts. 
V, 180, XI, 104. * Bobadilla, 614. 


252 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


proof of the shrewd commonsense of Ignatius that in this 
matter of the New Learning he escaped from his natural 
fear of anything that anybody accused of heresy, saw 
that there was not necessarily any heresy in a cultural 
education, and realized that the Company must have the 
new weapons to fight the battles of their own day. 

Just how he learned in Paris his respect for the three 
languages and humane letters as the base of all special 
training in theology, cannot be traced exactly. It seems 
hardly possible that he learned it at the College of Mon- 
taigu for Beda, its principal, was a leader of the Old 
Learning. It is possible that he transferred to Sainte 
Barbe after a year, because he did not like the instruction 
at Montaigu. At all events Sainte Barbe was the most 
progressive of the colleges in the University and was 
winning its nickname of the “Athens of Paris.” ‘New 
textbooks were being used and many of the faculty were 
men of the new ideals in studies.”** During Ignatius’ 
stay there “the object toward which these teachers had so 
long aspired was attained; genuine classic instruction was 
installed in all the chairs.””” 

Wherever it came from, certain it is that the colleges 
of the Company founded their education on that train- 
ing in humane letters and in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, 
which was the sign of the New Learning. They often ap- 
plied to their new institutions the name “trilingual col- 
leges,”°°® and the public exhibitions sometimes ended with 
the recitation of verses by the students in Hebrew, Latin 
and Greek.*’ In all this Ignatius was extremely active, 
now advising a correspondent to tone down his Latin 
style, and now sending a long letter to the Duke of 
Bavaria to explain that the Company does not wish to 
undertake theological instruction in the Academy of In- 
golstadt unless, “according to the method of our other 


* Brown, Buchanan, 19-60. Revue Rabelaisienne. VII, 304. ™ Quicherat, 
I, 132: ' Comp. 44,202. °°" Pol. IU, 551, 12255" Polite. 


THE COLLEGES OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS 253 


colleges, provision is made for teachers of humane letters 
to give the preparatory training in Latin, Greek and 
Hebrew literature.” 

It was this progressive step of conservative Ignatius, 
frankly adopting the method so many of his orthodox 
contemporaries feared, which after his death, enabled his 
followers to fight Lutheran and Calvinist on equal terms, 
to halt the progress of schism and actually win back 
heretic territory for the ancient Church. It was because 
the Jesuit schools were, in method, up to date, that in- 
fluential people wished to send their sons to them. If 
Jesuit fathers had not been so well trained in polite learn- 
ing and the elegancies of literature, princes would not 
have been so eager as they afterwards became to seek 
them as tutors for their children. 

Four years before his death Ignatius founded what was 
to become perhaps the most influential of all his educa- 
tional institutions—the German College at Rome. The 
idea of this establishment was not his own invention. It 
was suggested by Cardinal Morone*’ who had been papal 
legate in Germany and knew the desperate condition from 
the point of view of the ancient Church, even in the nom- 
inally Roman Catholic states of the Empire. 

Soon after its foundation Ignatius had a letter written 
explaining its purpose. “TI did not write in my last letter 
about a work of great Christian charity to bring back 
Germany to the faith and religion of the Catholic Church 
by erecting a college to which youths shall be brought 
from all parts of that region, including Poland, Bohemia 
and Hungary: lads of ability endowed with good natural 
parts and nobles among their own people. The idea is 
that these lads leaving those countries before they are 
depraved by the vicious habits and heretical opinions cus- 
tomary there, may be instructed in sound doctrine and a 
virtuous life, and, leaving the College as fit workmen for 

* Letts. VIII, 659. Letts. VII, 540. *Rib. p. 453. 


254 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the vineyard of the Lord, may go back to those countries 
—one with a bishopric, another to take a parish, another 
as canon of a cathedral, etc., in order to preach and help 
by doctrine and example those who speak his own tongue. 
For there is a great lack there of faithful and good 
workers and an over-plentiful supply of bad and per- 
verted workers.’ 
“Letts, IV, 185. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE BEGINNINGS OF MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN: 
THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIES 


Francis of Jassu and Xavier was descended from a 
race of Spanish country gentlemen. His father had risen 
to wealth and position in the service of the Kings of 
Navarre and married the heiress of a family of higher 
rank, from whom Francis took his name. The fidelity of 
the family to their old sovereigns during the wars of con- 
quest, which added the crown of Spanish Navarre to the 
other crowns of Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Aragon, 
dilapidated the family fortune, and the castle of Xavier 
was dismantled. In its half ruinous walls Francis was 
born about fifteen years later than Ignatius, whose fam- 
ily seat was some sixty miles distant. About two hun- 
dred years later it came to be asserted as an unquestion- 
able fact that Xavier was born in a stable like Jesus, 
but there was never any particular reason to believe it 
to be true and we now have very good reason to know it 
to be false.* 

Francis had no taste for arms and at the age of nine- 
teen went to Paris to qualify for a comfortable benefice. 
After he had been there eleven years, he was elected to 
a canonry in the Cathedral of Pamplona which was as 
much of a sinecure as he chose to make it and opened 
the way for that career in the Church which he had chosen 
as a boy.” But already he had set his feet upon another 
way of life. After he had been four years at the Univer- 


*Cros. I, 49. The same baseless legend grew up about Ignatius. 
* Cros. I, 140. 


255 


256 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


sity of Paris, his fellow Basque, Ignatius Loyola, became 
his roommate and, by a long struggle of three years, 
finally decided him to take the vow of Montmartre: to 
live all his life as a poor priest without benefice, to go to 
Jerusalem, to teach the infidel or if that were impossible, 
to do whatever the Pope should order him to do. This 
intimacy with Ignatius caused evil reports that he was 
a heretic and these had gotten home. So when Ignatius 
started for Spain in 1535, he carried a letter from Francis 
to his brother, the head of the house. It points out that 
Ignatius had often helped him with money and, so far 
from being a heretic as scandalous tongues said, had saved 
him from associates whose heresy “is now plainly known 
to all Paris.”” He asks his brother very delicately to send 
him some money.* 3 

Soon after the pilgrim priests arrived at Rome, Father 
Gouvea, who had been principal of the College of Sainte 
Barbe, of which Ignatius and Francis were students, sug- 
gested to the King of Portgual that the pilgrim priests 
would make excellent missionaries to the Portuguese con- 
quests in India: now some thirty-six years old. The 
King, who probably believed what he wrote, that “the 
principal end both of my father and of myself in the con- 
quest of India . . . has been the propagation of the holy 
Catholic faith,” ordered his ambassador to see the Pope, 
and the outcome was that Ignatius agreed to send a 
Portuguese and a Spaniard from his scanty force. He 
first chose Rodriguez and Bobadilla, but the latter be- 
came ill and Xavier started on twelve hours’ notice for 
Lisbon. ‘To separate from his comrades was evidently 
a strain upon his affections and before leaving Italy he 
wrote to Ignatius the first of many touching phrases of 
love. ‘I believe that in this life we cannot see each 
other any more except by letters. To see each other face 
to face with many embracings—that will be for the other 

® Mon. Xav. I, 201. 


THE MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN 257 


life. Let us then for the little time which remains to 
us of this life, visit each other often by letter.’’* 

In order to match this affection for his brethren by 
willingness to mortify his affection for his family, local 
tradition built up the legend adopted by many of his 
biographers, that he refused when passing close to his 
home to turn aside to say goodbye to his mother. There 
is no need of discussing whether this would be a high 
stage of self-abnegation necessary to evangelic perfection, 
or a misunderstanding of the spirit of Him whose dying 
lips commended His mother to the care of the disciple 
He loved. As a matter of fact, when Xavier went through 
Navarre on his wav to India, his mother had been dead 
more than ten years.” 

Rodriguez, whom Ignatius named as the comrade of 
Francis, was retained by the King of Portugal, and so 
the “Apostle to the Indies” left Lisbon with two young 
companions. From Goa, the capital of Portuguese India, 
he wrote his first Indian letter in September, 1542, and 
in ten years he died. Few men have lived so much 
in so short a time and some hundred letters,° written 
during those ten years, show a vivid, lovable and power- 
ful personality; different from that of Ignatius but almost 
as extraordinary. 

He was sent out to evangelize India, and it was his 
own idea to preach in Japan and to push on to China. 
His original task might seem a terrible one. The Por- 
tuguese conquests, defended by a chain of forts, extended 
along the western coast of India from Goa to the south- 
ernmost point of the great promontory; a distance of two 
hundred leagues. It was a long, thin strip, and they 
controlled inland little farther than the cannon of their 
fleets could carry.’ The Portuguese were conquerors and 
traders, and, in the forty odd years which had elapsed 


“Mon. Xav. I, 208. °Cros. I, p. 161. °See remarks of Cros. Il, XXX. 
* Cros. I, 208, 424. 


258 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


since their first appearance on the coast, they had proved 
not only the superiority of their artillery, but their greed 
for gold. John III and his father may have sent their 
admirals, governors and captains across the sea out of zeal 
for Christianity, but very few of those sent made plain 
any other motive but a desire to gain money, and his- 
tory shows few greater instances of the impossibility of 
serving God and mammon. Every decent man who has 
left his impressions of Portuguese India denounces their 
immorality, their injustice and their cruelty to the natives. 
The spirit which animated them as a whole was not 
superior to the spirit of Cortez and Pizzaro. If they did 
not steal so much as those cruel, wholesale bandits, it is 
only because they lacked opportunity. 

The Franciscans and Dominicans who preceded Xavier 
as missionaries to the Portuguese conquests had been 
able to make little real progress against the bad example 
of the rulers and the fear and hatred it bred in the natives. 
Besides, the natives were of a low order of intelligence 
and character and would at best have been difficult to 
evangelize truly. To both of these facts, the great cor- 
ruption of the Portuguese and the low order of the natives, 
we have clear testimony from Xavier himself. He wisely 
forbade his followers to attack in the pulpit the sins of 
men in authority. That was to be done in private con- 
versation and through the confessional. But, manfully, 
he wrote the plain truth to the King and bade him reform 
the administration of his colonies, if, at the Day of Judg- 
ment, he would not hear himself condemned to hell. As 
for the intellectual capacity of the natives, he wrote from 
Goa: “Those received into the Company in these coun- 
tries should not be used for anything more than the work 
of domestics in the houses where the Portuguese fathers 
live (temporal coadjutors), because they can never be 
ordained as priests for lack of the necessary qualities. 
Every year fathers must be sent from Portugal.” In 


THE MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN 259 


all forty-two fathers were sent out to him.® Considering 
the limited personnel of the Company and the great de- 
mands on its resources during these years, this number 
indicates great interest in the work in Asia. Personally 
Francis had no reason to fear any direct hindrance from 
the civil officials. His gentleness and tact made it hard 
for them to quarrel with him and besides he was directly 
backed by the King, who gave him liberal supplies of 
money and great authority. In addition he was a papal 
nuncio and, under the circumstances, entirely outside the 
scope of the authority of the civil officials.” 

He exercised civil power when it was needed to help 
his teaching. He sent a magistrate to the Malabar coast 
with the promise of a sum of money for every woman 
convicted of drinking arrack (the penalty was three days 
in prison) and bade his helper tell the municipal au- 
thorities of the City of Punicale that, if he learns that 
arrack is being drunk there, ‘‘they will pay for it very 
dearly to me.”’ He ordered that disobedient Christians 
should not be allowed to join in the pearl fishing and 
levied upon that chief industry of the coast, taxes to pro- 
vide schools for children. He ordered that a certain 
Portuguese wrongdoer should be banished from the coast. 
These and similar acts indicate the power given him by 
the support of the King. 

But while the government did not interfere with him 
at all, Francis thought it was failing utterly in its first 
duty. When he had been six years in India, he wrote to 
the King of Portugal to say that there was only one 
way to spread religion in India and that was for the 
King to lay the duty directly upon each governor; giving 
him command of all the members of religious orders (‘the 
King should name here in the first place the Company of 
Jesus”) to evangelize the country. To enforce this duty 
the King ought to take ‘‘a solemn oath that, if any gov- 

*Cros. II, 233, I, Appendix. °Mon. Xav. I, 815. 


260 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


ernor did not make many converts, he would have him put 
in irons and kept long years in prison with confiscation of 
all his goods.”” Francis adds: “If every governor was very 
certain that this oath of Your Majesty would be kept, 
the Isle of Ceylon, many kings of Malabar, and the Cape 
of Comorin would be Christian in a year.”’*° 

It was not by such dangerous plans as this that 
Francis Xavier deserved his title of Apostle to the Indies. 
His work was ceaseless, frequently left him short time to 
eat, and kept him on foot until he dropped with fatigue.” 
He had a wonderfully winning manner and one of his 
early biographers said he did more good by talking than 
in preaching. His example and his wise words made all 
men love him. Under his gentle influence jealousy be- 
tween the Company and other orders all but disappeared, 
for he ordered “Charity, friendship, and love with the 
blessed friars of the order of St. Francis and St. 
Dominic.”’*” 

The principle which underlay all his action was love. 
He wrote to Ignatius: ‘The rector you send for the col- 
lege at Goa should have two qualities above all. The 
first is obedience, so that he can win the friendship of the 
magistrates and clergy. Besides that he must be, not 
grave and severe, but affable and of a sweet disposition. 
By that quality he will win the hearts of all and especially 
of his brothers, the students. The Company of Jesus it 
Seems to me, is nothing but a company of love. Harsh- 
ness on one side, fear on the other, ought to be far from 
us. No one ought to be retained by any constraint. On 
the contrary, those lacking the necessary virtues ought to 
be rejected even though they wish to stay: and those 
who have these virtues—it is love alone which should 
bind them together.” 

The letter of Francis written to the fathers and brothers 


Mon. Xav. I, 450. Compare letters to Rodriguez, 455, also Pol. I, 346. 
“Cros. I, 226, II, 276, cited Letts. Francis. 
™ Cros. I, 450, cited Letts. Francis. ™Cros. I, 423. 


THE MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN 261 


of India giving an account of his mission to Japan 
is called by historians “The Great Letter.” It was in- 
tended not only for Goa but for a wide circulation in 
Portugal among young men who might be future mis- 
sionaries.* It ends as follows: ‘I beseech you that there 
may be among you a true love which allows no bitterness 
to be born in the soul. Turn part of your zeal into loving 
each other and part of your desires to suffer for Christ 
into conquering all dislikes which may stop the growth 
of that love; because you know Christ says that in this 
He knows His disciples ‘If they love one another.’ ” 
Ignatius doubtless read these passages with pleasure and 
approval, but if he has written many paragraphs in pre- 
cisely the same tone, the writer has missed them.” 
The love which filled the heart of Francis Xavier, was 
no weak complacency. He could take strong action 
guided by shrewd common sense which reminds us strongly 
of the method of Ignatius in handling similar situations. 
The man sent by Ignatius to serve as Rector of the Col- 
lege at Goa was “‘a good preacher and a good man, but, 
by the unanimous judgment of all the fathers in India, 
incapable of governing.” *® In the absence of Francis in 
Japan, the rector did great harm by action impelled by 
zeal without knowledge and exceeding his authority. On 
his return Francis reprimanded and punished him and 
when he showed pride and obstinacy dismissed him from 
the Company and stood by this action firmly in the teeth 
of the Viceroy and the nobles of his court. Francis had 
trouble with his secretary, a young man of influential 
family who apparently could not forget that fact. So he 
wrote to his vicar just before starting for China: “If 
André Carvalho does not go this year back to Portugal, 
dismiss him from the Company. Don’t let him be or- 
dained in India, for I forbid it. . . . Tell the Bishop of 


“Cross. II, 3. ™ There is one similar passage: Letts. I, 507. “Cros. I, 439, 
Lett. Father Lancilotti to Ignatius. 


262 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Goa that I beg him to grant me the grace not to let him 
be ordained even to the diaconate.” But he wrote to 
Father Simon at Lisbon: “I have thought it best that 
André Carvalho, who acts as my secretary, should be sent 
to Portugal. . . . Here the climate is unfavourable to 
his health, perhaps his native air will suit him better.” 
Many speak highly of him. ‘For my part I cannot say 
much good of him, but I hope in God that, when he shall 
have acquired more knowledge and more virtue, he will 
be very useful in the Company.” 

He could use the whip of small cords but reprehension 
was not the easiest thing for him. After writing Father 
Cyprien: ‘You are so accustomed to following your own 
sweet will that you scandalize every body and then ex- 
cuse yourself by saying it is the result of your tempera- 
ment,” Francis bursts out in a postscript: “O Cyprien, 
if you knew with what love I write such things to you, 
you would remember me day and night and perhaps you 
would weep at thinking of the great love I have for you. 
If the hearts of men were visible in this life, believe me, 
my brother Cyprien, you would see yourself plainly in 
my heart.’’*® 

Francis has left no record of visions and ecstasies like 
that of Ignatius, but everybody who came close to him 
knew his life was pretty well divided between trying to 
help his neighbour and intercourse with God. There is 
very strong evidence, including his own and that of in- 
timate friends, that there were associated with his preach- 
ing phenomena of recovery from illness similar to those 
for which abundant and manifestly honest affidavits can 
be today obtained in connection with cures wrought at 
pilgrimage shrines, e.g. at Ste. Anne de Beaupré, Canada, 
at Lourdes and Lisieux in France. Let Francis tell of 
these himself. ‘TI lived for four months in a large Chris- 
tain community. ... So many people came to ask me to go 

” Cros, II, 249, 252. * Cros. II, 241, 243. 


THE MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN 263 


to their houses to recite certain prayers over the sick and 
so many of the sick themselves came to me, that, without 
any other work, it would have given me enough todo. . 
and I was teaching children, baptizing, translating prayers, 
answering endless questions, burying the dead, etc. 
Nevertheless I could not reject such holy demands with- 
out peril to their faith. . . . So I ordered the boys who 
knew the prayers to go to the houses of the sick. There 
they united the family and neighbours and all repeated 
several times the creed, telling the sick man to believe 
that he would be cured. Then followed other prayers. 
. . . Our Lord rewarded by many graces of healing the 
faith of the parents and neighbours and that of the sick 
themselves.” '® 

Seven years after his arrival at Goa, Francis was the 
head of a string of mission stations stretching a thou- 
sand leagues to the Malay Archipelago. But he was not 
content. The adventurous spirit of the man inclined 
him to answer with joy a Macedonian cry to come over 
into the little known Empire of Japan and begin new con- 
quests for the kingdom of Christ.” So, feeling that his 
presence was no longer necessary in India, he started on 
his long voyage, taking with him a young Japanese from 
the College at Goa. He found the Japanese, like the 
Athenians, anxious to hear some new thing, and he founded 
missions, which, thirty-five years after his death, furnished 
thousands of converts who died for their faith. Even 
before he had gotten back to Japan he had determined 
to go to China. The introduction of foreigners into China 
was forbidden under pain of death and Xavier arranged 
to go in the suite of a merchant ambassador, bearing very 
handsome presents for the Emperor. The captain of 
the fortress of Malacca, moved by political jealousy, broke 


Mon. Xav. I, 284. ™“The Japanese have sent ambassadors to the King 
asking for fathers to teach the Christian faith.” Letts. Francis, Cros. I, 470. 


264 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


up the expedition. Xavier, however, persisted in his mis- 
sion; now become extremely dangerous. He got to the 
half desert Chinese island of Sanchoan, where foreign 
merchants landed secretly to trade with Chinese; living 
during this furtive visit in huts built of straw which they 
burnt when they left.** For a very large price Xavier 
bribed the captain of a Chinese merchant ship to run the 
risk of smuggling him into Canton.” But the man was 
slow in coming back with a smaller vessel and, after two 
months of waiting, Francis took a fever. We have a 
confused account of his stay on the island from a young 
Chinese convert from the College of Goa who was with 
him to the end. We learn from it that, after five days 
of high fever, this great wanderer across strange seas to — 
uncharted lands saw his “‘pilot face to face.” 

He was a strong and noble personality, a born leader 
of men who became an inspirer, a path finder, for those 
who came after him. 

No one who reads with a candid mind the letters of 
Francis Xavier and the recollections of those who knew 
him, will think of attributing the chief glory of the ex- 
traordinary missionary work in Asia of the Company of 
Jesus to any one but him. If Ignatius wrote him many 
letters, they have not survived. The last letter of Ignatius 
summoned Xavier back to talk with the King of Por- 
tugal and the Pope and to select and inspire men for the 
Asian missions. It crossed the news of his death. 

It was not the distance that kept Ignatius from send- 
ing orders, for he wrote Xavier that he could govern the 
Indian mission just as well, indeed much better, from 
Portugal than from Japan or China. It was again the 
common sense of Ignatius which kept him from inter- 
fering in matters where he had no experience and ham- 
pering by orders a great lieutenant who needed no guid- 

™ Cros. II, 341. *@ Cros. II, 33i; 


THE MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN 265 


ance. Nevertheless the glory of Xavier is part of the 
glory of Loyola. Ignatius worked for three years in Paris 
to win Francis from the vulgar ambition of a younger 
son longing for a rich and distinguished ecclesiastical 
career, to an ideal of poverty and humblest service. He 
kept him from heresy and remained through life his 
greatest inspiration. Whenever Xavier wished to recom- 
mend anything especially by word or pen to his brethren 
in India, he was wont to add: “I beg, or recommend, 
or order, this by the love, or the reverence, or the 
obedience we all owe to our blessed Father Ignatius.”” 


Francis, in the last year of his life, wrote a letter whose 
opening words show what strength he drew from the 
friendship of Ignatius. ‘Most truly my Father, I re- 
ceived a letter from your holy charity at Malacca on 
my way back from Japan and God knows how my soul 
was consoled to get the news it so longed for that you were 
alive and in good health. And, among many other holy 
and consoling words of your letter, I read those which 
close it, ‘All thine without ever being able to forget you, 
Ignatius.’ These words I read with tears of joy as I 
now write them down with tears; remembering the days 
of the past and how much love you have always had and 
still have for me, and also thinking how God has deliv- 
ered me from great labour and peril in Japan in answer 
to your holy prayers. . . . You write of your great de- 
sire to see me before you die. God knows how great an 
impression was made upon my soul by these words of such 
great love and how many tears they bring to my eyes 
every time I recall them to mind. . . . The least of your 
sons but the oldest in exile. Francis.’ 

Somebody has written on the documents of the process 
of canonization of Ignatius and Francis this epigram: 


°8 Mon. Xav. II, 807. Teixeira to Rib. ™ Mon. Xav. I, 668, 674. 


266 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


“Very many and very great 
Are of Xavier the miracles: 
But one miracle of Ignatius 


Is the greatest: namely, Xavier.”” 


During the lifetime of Ignatius a beginning was made 
of the Jesuit missions to South America by sending six 
comrades to Brazil. At his death seven years later Brazil 
was a separate province of the Company with establish- 
ments in three centres. 

An attempt to renew unsuccessful efforts of other 
orders to bring into the Church the monophysite heretic 
Ethiopians who acknowledged the authority of the Coptic © 
Patriarch of Alexandria, met with no lasting success. 

The missions to the Indians of Canada and the Middle 
United States, the heroic story of which is told in the 
Jesuit Relations, were not begun until seventy years after 
the death of Ignatius. 

8 Cited, Stewart, 342. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 


The most efficient means Ignatius had for gaining suit- 
able recruits for his Company were the Spiritual Exer- 
cises. The accumulated force produced by these powerful 
psychical efforts during a period of complete separation 
from ordinary human intercourse, must have tended to 
create a current in the soul which drifted sensitive and 
noble natures—and Ignatius wished no others—power- 
fully toward a life completely absorbed by the direct 
service of God and their fellow men. That general de- 
cision once made, gratitude for help in reaching it would 
impel those most apt toward the Company of Jesus. The 
Directory of Ignatius, a sort of appendix dictated by him 
“in substance” shortly before his death, says:* “It is 
not desirable to advise everybody to shut himself up to 
take the Exercises. . . . He who begins them ought to 
be educated or capable, free and fit for the Company. 
. . . lf he is apt but not disposed to take the Exercises, 
aid him with familiar conversations, but cautiously, so 
that he does not suspect there is any craft; though it is 
the holy craft spoken of by St. Paul to the Corinthians 
when he wrote ‘being crafty I caught you with guile.’ 
Remember that it is contrary to the rules of the Exer- 
cises and the purity of the spirit of the Company, to 
urge anybody to join it.” 

Although all members of the Company were given the 
Spiritual Exercises (temporal coadjutors only in part) 
it must not be assumed that they were given only to those 


* Pg. 751, 785-786 Mon. Ig. Series Secunda. Vol. I. 
267 


268 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


who were expected to enter the Company if they stood 
the test. On the contrary, a great many people took 
them who were not expected to join the Company, but 
in such cases usually only the first week was given. 

The arrangement of the little book appears somewhat 
clumsy. It seems more like a mass of pieces put together 
than an organic work. In spite of his long years spent 
in study, Ignatius never acquired facility in logically ar- 
ranging his thoughts in writing, or in expressing them 
with elegance. He does not always write even with 
clearness. The Exercises contain nearly five hundred 
words in a form peculiar to itself or at least very unusual, 
and the Catholic historian Johannes Janssen says of it, 
“From a literary point of view the book is entirely with- 
out charm.”* Its power will seem the greater to those 
who put themselves in the place of the giver and receiver 
of the Exercises. 

In spite of the fact that a good deal of the Spiritual 
Exercises comes from other books, it is an extremely orig- 
inal work. The name had been a common term for a long 
time. ‘Twenty-one years before Ignatius was converted, 
the Benedictine Abbot of Montserrat, Garcia de Cisneros, 
had printed a book entitled Ejercitatorio Espiritual 
(Method of Spiritual Exercise). Ignatius while he was at 
Manresa, close to Montserrat, would be very apt to read 
this book and a comparison suggests strongly that he did. 
Parts of the Spiritual Exercises may have been derived 
from Cisneros for example, four of the twenty Aznota- 
tions, three of the ten additions, etc. But it is in no 
sense dependent upon Cisneros either in thought or lan- 
guage and the most striking and powerful things in it are 
not to be found in his work. The Spiritual Exercises also 
made use of the Life of Christ by Ludolph, which was 
one of the books read by Ignatius while he was recover- 
ing from wounds. It was to that bed of pain that he him- 

? Longridge page VI, Introduction. 


THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 269 


self traced the beginnings of the Exercises. At the end 
of the Confessions’ he said, in answer to a question, he 
had not “written them at one time but some things which 
he had observed in his own soul and found useful seemed 
to him perhaps fitted to be useful to others and so he put 
them in writing. For example, the way of examining the 
conscience, etc. Especially he told me that the section 
about Choices he had drawn from the conflict of spirits 
and thoughts which he went through in the castle of 
Loyola when he was suffering with his leg.”” When he 
was arrested in Salamanca, six years after his conver- 
sion, he gave to the judges for examination a manuscript 
book which was undoubtedly the beginning, perhaps con- 
tained the most striking parts, of the Exercises. There 
is a translation into “very barbarous Latin,”* made in 
1541 which contains the complete book as we know it. 
During these twenty years therefore from 1521 to 1541 
Ignatius wrote the Exercises in Spanish. Whatever ma- 
terials he may have found in his memories, conscious or 
unconscious, of things he had read in a few other books, 
the inspiring and moulding element is his own experience 
and this makes the book his.” 

It was first printed eight years before the death of 
Ignatius (1548). The preface of the book explains that it 
is not meant for popular circulation, and therefore is 
not to be sold. It is not intended to be an ordinary 
manual of devotion like the Imitation of Christ so loved 
by Ignatius. It is to be put only into the hands of those 
who are directing the exercises, as a guide in giving them. 
At the beginning of the more modern editions there is 
the beautiful old prayer Anima Christi, as well known as 
the Our Father or the Ave Maria. Ignatius did not place 
it there but he recommends its use later in the Exercises. 


®Scripta, I, p. 97. *Astrain, 148. °For its sources see Watrigant; also Int. 
to Mon. Ig. Series Secunda, I, pages 10-136. 


270 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Soul of Christ sanctify me. 

Body of Christ save me. 

Blood of Christ lift me out of self. 
Water from the side of Christ wash me. 
Suffering of Christ comfort me. 

Oh! good Jesus, hear me: 

Hide me in Thy wounded arms: 

Let me not be separated from Thee: 
From the wicked enemy save me: 

In the hour of my death call me, 
And bid me come to Thee, 

That with the saints I may praise Thee 
To all the ages. Amen. 


The main body of the Exercises consists of forty-four 
pages. It is preceded by twenty pages of annotations 
and followed by thirty-four pages of addenda. The Exer- 
sises proper are divided into four weeks, but the director 
has power to shorten or lengthen them in actual days if 
he thinks best. The object is said to be “To conquer 
self and order life without being decided by any exag- 
gerated affection.”’ 

The first week is preceded by a meditation on the prin- 
ciple and foundation from which all progress must come; 
that principle is the object of human life. Ignatius states 
it most succinctly thus: “I am created to praise God in 
word and deed and to save my soul;”’ which is equivalent 
in different words to the Westminster Catechism: ‘What 
is the chief end of man?” “To glorify God and enjoy 
Him for ever.” 

The use of all things in life should be controlled by 
the object of life and the purpose of meditations on it is 
to make ourselves “so far as possible indifferent; not 
desiring health more than infirmity, riches more than 
poverty, honour of men above contempt, a long life more 
than a short one, but only desiring and choosing what will 


THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 271 


best lead us to fulfil the true purpose of life.” This pre- 
paratory meditation is followed by two sorts of examina- 
tions of conscience. 

The first is a “particular examination.” Beginning on 
rising in the morning, the man must determine to guard 
himself against the sin that easily besets him. After the 
midday meal he ought to go over carefully every hour 
since morning and mark by a point on a diagram the num- 
ber of times he has fallen into that sin. After supper 
he must do the same. Ignatius gives an example of the 
sort of diagram to use for this record of sins and recom- 
mends that day should be compared with day and week 
with week to see if there is improvement. 

This particular examination is joined to a general exam- 
ination of the conscience. The director should point out 
that we have three sorts of thoughts, one our own and two 
which come from without; one from the good spirit and 
the other from the evil spirit. He must then explain the 
conquering of evil thoughts. Sins of word are then dis- 
cussed; blasphemy, slander and idle words, i.e., “any talk 
not intended to profit me or anyone else.” Under sins 
of deed are included disobedience to the ten command- 
ments, the precepts of the Church and things commended 
by superiors, like indulgences or bulls of crusade, ‘“‘for we 
incur no little sin by opposing or causing others to oppose 
such recommendations of uur superiors.” 

Five things are then recommended to the penitent, 
thanks to God, a prayer for grace to know his sins, to 
demand an accounting from his soul, to ask pardon of 
God, to determine by His help to improve. A general 
confession covering the whole life is then to be made 
to a priest, but not to the director who is giving the 
Exercises. After this preparation the first exercise opens 
with a prayer. Two preambles begin it, the first is what 
Ignatius calls: “Composition; seeing the place.” This 
is continually used and means an effort of the imagina- 


272 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


tion to clothe the idea with a visible form. In the case 
of sin it means trying to see with the eye of the imagina- 
tion. ‘My soul imprisoned in this corruptible body and 
my whole self living like one banished from his true 
country in this vale of misery among brute beasts.” The 
second preamble is “to demand of God what I wish and 
desire; in this case shame and confusion of face over my 
sins.” Then follow the three points of the meditation to 
which must be applied the three faculties of the soul: the 
memory, the understanding and the will. The points are 
the three sins. First that of the fallen angels “consider- 
ing that while they have gone to hell for one sin, I have 
deserved it for many sins;” second, the sin of Adam and ~ 
Eve “bringing to my mind how great corruption came 
by it upon the human race, so many men going towards 
hell”; third, “‘the particular sin of some one person who 
for one mortal sin has gone to hell, and many others 
without number who have gone to hell for fewer sins than 
I have committed.” 

The Exercise ends with a colloquy. Imagining Christ 
on the cross, the taker of the exercises is to ask Him 
“about His becoming man and dying for my sins.” Then 
he is to ask himself ““What have I done for Christ, what 
am I doing for Christ, what ought I to do for Christ?” 
This colloquy should be made ‘“‘as a friend speaks to a 
friend or a servant to a master.” 

The form of this exercise is that of all the others. The 
prayer, the two preambles that is composition and fixing 
the object, the points, the colloquy, appear in all the 
exercises. 

The second exercise uses all these forms in a medita- 
tion upon the man’s own sins ending by a colloquy 
with God on mercy. The third exercise is a repetition 
of the first and second but it closes with three colloquies: 
one with Our Lady, ending with an Ave Maria, the second 
with Christ, ending with the Anima Christi, the third 


THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES rH Be) 


with the Father ending with the Lord’s Prayer. The 
fourth exercise is a resumption of the third; ending 
with the same three colloquies. 

The fifth exercise is “a meditation upon hell.” Tt opens 
with a prayer followed by the preambles. The composi- 
tion is “to see with the eyes the length, breadth and 
depth of hell.” The thing asked for of God is “‘a realizing 
sense of the pains of the damned, so that, if through my 
faults I forget the love of God, at least the fear of the 
pains of hell may keep me from sin.” A sort of exercise 
which Ignatius called the application of the senses and 
often used, follows on five points. 1. “To see with the 
eyes of the imagination, the great fires of hell and the 
souls as it were in fiery bodies. 2. To hear with the 
ears the laments, the groans, the cries, the blasphemies 
against Christ Our Lord and against all his saints. 3. To 
smell the smoke, the brimstone, the sewer filth and putrid 
things. 4. To taste by the palate bitter things such as 
tears, melancholy and the worm of conscience. 5. To 
feel by the sense of touch how those fires burn the souls.” 

The colloquy is with Christ recalling to memory the 
souls which are in hell, some for not believing in His 
coming, some for believing but not obeying. It is to be 
divided into three parts; those lost before the incarna- 
tion, those lost during His life in this world, and those 
lost since. It ends with thanksgiving ‘‘because I am not 
in any of these classes.” 

It would be misleading to the reader to allow him to 
suppose, as some who have written on the Spiritual Exer- 
cises do leave their readers to suppose, that there was 
anything in these five points peculiar to Ignatius, except 
the skilful way in which he used the picture they draw 
in outline to produce the psychological result he desired. 
Generations before his birth this picture of hell had been 
fully developed from phrases in the gospels and was as- 
sumed as realistic even by men whose souls were not, like 


274 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


his, totally absorbed in religion. There was nothing pe- 
culiar to Ignatius and his followers in the use of a realistic 
image of hell as a strong motive for accepting Christian 
faith. 

Jonathan Edwards was elected President of Princeton 
University nearly two hundred years after the death of 
Ignatius. He preached in his church at Northampton, 
Massachusetts, a sermon entitled ‘Sinners in the Hands 
of an Angry God” from which the following paragraphs 
are taken. 

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much 
as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the 
fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked; His wrath 
towards you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy 
of nothing else than to be cast into the fire; you are ten 
thousand times as abominable in His eyes as the most 
hateful and venomous serpent is in ours. . . . And yet it 
is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into 
the fire; . . . yes, there is nothing else that is to be given 
as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down 
into hell. 

“Oh sinner! consider the fearful danger you are in. 
It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless 
pit, full of the fire of wrath that you are held over by the 
hand of that God whose wrath is as much incensed against 
you as against many of the damned in hell: you hang by 
a slender thread with the flames of divine wrath flashing 
about it and ready every moment to singe and burn it 
asunder, etc.” 

The psychological object of such a sermon was pre- 
cisely the psychological object of the meditation about hell 
of the Spiritual Exercises—to sear upon the soul a hatred 
of sin by terror. Men believed firmly in a blazing eternal 
hell beneath their feet for centuries before Ignatius was 
born: in Catholic and Protestant churches alike it was 
preached for nearly three hundred years after his death. 


THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 275 


The meditation upon hell of the fifth exercise of the 
first week of the Spiritual Exercises describes a view of 
the world in its relations to human life which was not 
only fundamental to the thinking of Ignatius but ex- 
tremely active in his teaching and living. How many 
readers of this book have ever heard a sermon remotely 
resembling the sermon of Jonathan Edwards, or read 
a recent religious book from which citations could be made 
comparable to those he has just read? The fact that such 
teaching is little heard now is just the reason for making 
its importance in the life of Ignatius clear. To give the 
impression that this vision of the unseen world was in 
any sense peculiar to him is to give a false picture of his 
life, but to fail to emphasize the importance in determin- 
ing his character and directing his work, of the details 
of his fundamental conception of the unseen world, is to 
give a very imperfect picture of his life. Ignatius rose 
above the fear of hell and of the devils who, he believed, 
were trying from birth to death to drag men into it and his 
life rested in the love of God sustained by frequent visions 
of Him. But the conception of the eternal battle of the 
universe remained in his mind and especially in the minds 
of his followers poignant and effective upon conduct. 

That conception and the determining influence it ought 
to exert upon the life of all men of good will, is set forth 
in the second week of the Exercises with grandiose imag- 
inative power. 

The taker of the Exercises (first point) is to imagine 
a human king chosen by God whom all Christians honour 
and obey. Second, he is bidden to hear the king speak- 
ing to all his followers saying, ‘“‘My will is to conquer all 
the land of the infidels. Therefore whoever wants to 
come with me must be content with the clothes I use, 
and eat and drink as I do, etc. Also he must work with 
me in the day and watch by night, etc., because he must 
share the work if he is to have part in the victory. Third, 


276 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


let him consider then what all good subjects ought to 
answer to a king so generous and so liberal and there- 
fore if any one should refuse the call of such a king how 
much he would deserve to be vituperated by all the world 
and thought an unworthy knight.” ‘The second part of 
this exercise consists in applying this example of the tem- 
poral king to Christ.” This is to be carefully done under 
three heads and the exercise is to be repeated twice a day. 
A note says that during the following weeks it is profit- 
able to read sometimes the Imitation of Christ, the gos- 
pels and lives of the saints. 

Practical directions, called additions, are put in here 
at the end of the first week; with which the exercises 
often ended. The first exercise should be taken at mid- 
night (omitted for the aged or those showing nervous 
strain), the second on rising, the third before dinner, the 
fourth at vespers, the fifth before supper. The taker of 
the Exercises “must not think of pleasant and joyful things, 
like glory, the resurrection, etc., but of death and judg- 
ment.” He is not to laugh or provoke laughter. If a 
penance of restriction in food or sleep is adopted, the 
health must not be injured. In regard to mortifications 
of the flesh by wearing hair cloth, scourging oneself, etc. ; 
the most suitable are those which give pain but do not 
cause infirmity. The postulant should not make his 
meditations in full clear light, but the doors and windows 
of his room must be closed except when he is praying, 
reading or eating. 

The first three days of the second week, are given up 
to contemplations upon the life of Christ. The first day 
contains five exercises: a contemplation of the incarna- 
tion, then one on the nativity followed by two repetitions 
and the application of the senses to the incarnation and 
the nativity. This consists in “seeing with the imag- 
inative contemplative or meditative vision the vast variety 
of men upon the earth, some white, others black, some 


THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 277 


laughing, others weeping, some being born, others dying, 
etc., then seeing that the three divine Persons regarding 
the earth full of men and beholding them all descending 
into hell, determined in their eternity that the Second 
Person should become man to save the human race, hear- 
ing what the human persons in this transaction say or 
might say and touching with the inner touch [e.g. kiss- 
ing or embracing| the places where Joseph, Mary or the 
Infant trod or sat, smelling and tasting the infinite soft- 
ness and sweetness of the Divinity, etc.” 

The second and third day contain less elaborately de- 
veloped meditations on the early life of Christ when he 
was obedient to His parents in Nazareth and how He 
left them and was found teaching in the temple. This 
brings the taker of the exercises naturally and skilfully up 
to the peak or crisis of the whole experience through which 
he is being led, i.e., to his election or choice of the state 
of l4fe. A preamble to the consideration of states of life 
points out that Christ obedient to His parents in Naza- 
reth represents the ordinary Christian. When He left 
His foster father and His natural mother to give Him- 
self to the pure service of His eternal Father, he is a 
model of evangelic perfection. Stripped of all technical 
terms the question now brought forward before the taker 
of the Exercises is whether it is not his duty to become a 
monk. He must decide this for himself for the director 
of the Exercises is strictly forbidden to talk with him 
about it. ) 

He is introduced to this question by the vision of the 
“two banners; the one of Christ our great captain, the 
other of Lucifer the mortal enemy of our human nature.” 
The first preamble is the history, how Christ calls all 
men under His banner and Lucifer under his. The second 
preamble is composition, seeing the place, “to imagine 
a vast plain around Jerusalem where the supreme captain 
general of the good is Christ: and another plain at Baby- 


278 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


lon where the chief of the enemy is Lucifer.” The prayer 
for a definite desire is “to ask for knowledge and help 
against the wiles of the evil chief and for knowledge of 
the true life shown by the true captain and grace to imi- 
tate Him.”’ Then follows the meditation, divided as usual 
into points (here omitted). One must “imagine how the 
chief of all the enemies sits in that great plain of Babylon 
as on a high throne of smoke and fire, horrible and dread- 
ful to look upon. He calls together countless devils and 
scatters them, some to one city, others to another city, 
throughout all the world, leaving out no province, place 
nor state of life, nor any individual person. He makes 
a speech and orders them to use nets and chains to take 
men captive who are first to be tempted with greed for 
riches in order that they may get the vain honour of 
this world and so become swollen with pride and from 
these three steps can be led on to all the other vices.” 
“On the other hand consider how Christ Our Lord places 
Himself in a great plain around Jerusalem; in a lowly 
place, beautiful and pleasing to behold. He makes a 
speech to all His servants and friends whom he sends out 
on this expedition, charging them to wish to help all by 
drawing them first to the highest spiritual poverty (‘poor 
in spirit’) and (if it should please His divine majesty and 
he should wish to choose them) not less to actual poverty. 
Secondly He charges them to draw men towards a desire 
to be reproached and despised; bécause from these two 
things comes humility. So that there are three steps of 
good; poverty instead of riches, contempt as opposed to 
worldly honour, and humility instead of pride.” From 
these three steps men are to be led on to all the other 
virtues. The exercise is closed by three colloquies, with 
Our Lady, the Son and the Father. 

This meditation is to be made at midnight, on rising, 
about the time of mass and at vespers. Before supper 
there must be made the meditation on the “Three Classes 


THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 279 


of Men in order to Join the Best.” Imagine three men, 
each of whom has gained 10,000 ducats. They all want 
to save their souls and to be at peace with God by ridding 
themselves of the weight of their love for this money. 
The first man would like this, but does not take means 
to carry out his wish until death. The second wishes to 
get rid of love for the money, but to keep it, so that God 
should come to what he desires rather than that he should 
come to God. The third man wants to get rid of the 
love of the money in such a way that he is no more in- 
clined to keep it than not to keep it, except as God shall 
teach him and it may be better for God’s service. Mean- 
while he wishes to be in the attitude of one who actually 
leaves all for God; so that what finally moves him to 
keep or leave the money, is the desire of being better able 
to serve God. 

There follow topics for eight days taken from the life 
of Christ and it is explained that as many of these are to 
be used as are found necessary. The second week closes 
with the elections or choices of life. This is to be pre- 
ceded by instruction about the three sorts of humility. 
The first or minimum necessary to salvation, is the will- 
ingness to obey the law of God and refuse to commit 
mortal sin for any price “even to save my life.” The 
second and more perfect sort consists of an attitude of 
indifference toward riches or poverty, honour or dis- 
honour, long or short life and the determination that “not 
for the whole world, nor to save my life would I commit 
venial sin.” The third sort includes the first two and, in 
order to be actually more like Christ, goes on to choose 
poverty with Him. 

The sorts of elections are next considered. “In the 
first place things that are matters of choice must be good, 
or at best indifferent in themselves and approved by our 
holy mother, the Hierarchical Church.” Choices about 
such things may be either unchangeable, like getting mar- 


280 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


ried or becoming a priest, or changeable, like accepting 
or refusing a benefice or secular property. An unchange- 
able choice may have been made from bad motives. In 
this case there is nothing to do but to repent and do one’s 
duty the best way possible. 

The three times when a good choice may be made are 
then considered. ‘The first is under the call of God as 
when St. Paul and St. Matthew decided to follow Christ. 
The second is when the soul is receiving good and evil 
suggestions and requires the discernment of spirits. The 
third time of election is tranquil when the soul is not 
agitated by various spirits (good or evil) and can use 
its faculties freely and quietly. In this the man, con- 
sidering the true end of life and desiring to reach it, 
chooses as a means a kind of life within the Church in 
order to be helped in the service of God and the salva- 
tion of his soul. There are two methods of making a 
choice out of this tranquil mood of the soul. The first 
method which applies only to changeable choices, has six 
points: (1) to understand thoroughly the thing to be 
accepted or rejected, (2) to keep firmly in mind that 
the end of life is to praise God and save the soul, (3) 
to beg Him for enlightenment, (4) to consider definitely 
each and all of the advantages of either choice and weigh 
them against each and all the disadvantages of it, (5) 
finally to decide the matter according to the way the 
reason inclines and pray God to accept and confirm the 
decision. The second method suggests by its terms the 
decision to enter a religious order. It consists of four 
points: First, the man is to be sure that the love which 
moves him to his choice comes from above. Second, 
he is to imagine a man he has never seen whose highest 
spiritual perfection he desires and consider what he would 
say to him about such a choice. Third, he is to imagine 
himself about to die and consider what he would then de- 
sire that he had chosen. Finally he is to imagine him- 


THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 281 


self on the Day of Judgment and to act in the way in 
which he would then wish to have acted. 

A note on “Reforming one’s present life and state,” 
suggests that much of this matter can be used to help 
people who do not wish to enter the higher life by lead- 
ing them to examine carefully how they ought to choose 
to manage their household or spend their income, etc. 
But the election for which all these rules were made is, 
in the first and chief instance, the decision whether to 
enter a religious order or not. And Ignatius’ deep know- 
ledge of the human heart, his skilful though unscientific 
psychological analysis, appears most plainly in this part 
of his book. After having impressed upon the mind of 
the taker of the Exercises the awful consequences of sin 
to the world and to himself, he appeals to every chiv- 
alrous impulse in his soul by the vision of the two banners 
set in the midst of meditations on the earthly life of 
Christ. If he had no dormant chivalrous impulses in his 
soul Ignatius did not want him in the Company. This is 
followed by careful reasoning about the choices of life 
from a religious point of view which suggests inevitably, 
though without bringing any pressure to bear except logic 
and a strong current of emotion, that the perfect life is 
to be found in a religious order. And in which one better 
than in this Company of the Great Captain of our Salva- 
tion? Nevertheless it is to be noted that a considerable 
number of people who took the Exercises went into other 
religious orders. 

The remaining two weeks fill less than one quarter of 
the pages of the exercises proper, and appear almost an 
anti-climax after the first two weeks. But probably the 
man who had passed through the strenuous emotions of 
the part leading up to the election found in them a 
needed rest for his soul. The third week has seven days 
of meditation on the passion of Christ developed under the 
forms with which the reader is already familiar. At the 


282 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


end are inserted eight practical rules about eating during 
the Exercises; for Ignatius neglects nothing large or small 
which might affect his purpose. No fasting is enforced. 
It is recommended to imagine at table that one is eat- 
ing with Christ and the apostles and to guide eating, 
drinking and talking by that thought. 

The fourth week is a series of meditations on the resur- 
rection of Christ and this closes the exercises proper. But 
three unconnected exercises follow to be used by the 
director as he sees fit. A Contemplation for Obtaining 
Love, a long Meditation on the Mysteries of the Life of 
Our Lord; and Instruction in Three Ways of Praying. 

The book closes with various series of rules; for the — 
distribution of alms; and three sets of rules which con- 
cern distinguishing among the moods of the soul those 
which come from God or the craft of the devil: what St. 
Paul calls “discerning of spirits.” Ignatius laid great 
stress on this, to defend his followers against being cheated 
by the wiles of the enemy. To him the scene of the two 
banners was no mere oratorical allegory. It was a sober 
representation of fact. This world was the scene of a 
constant struggle between Christ and his followers, visible 
or invisible, and Satan and his innumerable ministers of 
evil. That fight was to him the fundamental fact about 
human life and the Company of Jesus was in that deadly 
fight with every last ounce of energy of every single one 
of its members. He believed as St. Paul wrote that his 
Company “wrestled not against flesh and blood but against 
spiritual wickedness in high places” and he thought the 
skill and craft of the great enemy of mankind rendered 
him dangerous only to timid and untrained fighters. For 
example, in the twelfth rule for discerning spirits Ignatius 
writes “the enemy acts like a woman in being weak in 
force and strong only in malice. For, as it is the nature 
of a woman when she quarrels with a man to lose courage 
and flee when the man faces her boldly, but, on the other 


THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 283 


hand, if the man loses courage and begins to flee, the 
vengeance, the wrath and the fierceness of the woman are 
greatly increased and become boundless; so the devil 
weakens, loses courage and flees when he is boldly faced. 
But if the taker of the Exercises begins to be afraid 
and to lose courage before temptation, there is no beast 
on the face of the globe so fierce as the enemy of human 
nature.” 

The book closes with eighteen “Rules for Thinking 
truly and as we ought in the Militant Church” and these 
few pages are very important for understanding the atti- 
tude and character of Ignatius. They have no special 
connection with the Exercises and the reader who sees 
them for the first time at once suspects that they were 
the last to be written. 

Anyone brought up as a Protestant, who has read no 
Roman Catholic devotional books, must make a strong 
effort of the imagination to reach a sympathetic apprecia- 
tion of the attitude Ignatius describes in them. These 
rules are manifestly directed against heresy which is not 
mentioned in the Spiritual Exercises. He does not attack 
it directly. Elsewhere he advised his preachers not 
to do that. But in these rules he stresses point by point 
the positive side of the main controversies with the 
heretics. He first exalts ready and prompt obedience 
to the Church, laying aside every personal judgment. He 
then enjoins the praise of a number of things: confes- 
sion to a priest and taking the eucharist at least once a 
year; the frequent hearing of mass and fixed hours for 
prayer; virginity as a higher state than matrimony; mo- 
nastic vows as leading to evangelical perfection; venera- 
tion of relics of the saints, pilgrimages, indulgences and 
candles lighted in churches; public fasts, penances, images 
in the churches, the scholastic theologians, Aquinas, the 
Master of the Sentences, etc., as more modern and better 
able to teach for our times what is necessary for salva- 


284 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


tion than the patristic fathers like Jerome, Augustine, 
et. al.; to praise finally all the precepts of the Church. 

Ignatius then lays down the thirteenth rule that “to 
arrive at the truth in all things we ought always be ready 
to believe that what I see as white is black if the Church 
so defines it.” That this expressed in general his con- 
scientious attitude not only toward the inspired Church, 
but also toward all lawful authority is evident from the 
tenth rule “We ought to be more ready to approve and 
praise than to find fault with the enactments and cus- 
toms of our superiors, because, even though sometimes 
they may not be worthy of praise, still to speak against 
them before the common people . . . may irritate them — 
against their superiors whether temporal or spiritual. 
. . . But just as it does harm to talk to the common 
people of the evil of their superiors who are absent, so it 
is profitable to talk of their evil ways privately to those 
very superiors who are able to amend them.” 

Then follow five rules about teaching and preaching. 
‘Although it is very true that no one can be saved unless 
he is predestinated” we ought not to speak much about 
predestination lest people be led into error. Likewise 
we must be careful lest by over emphasis on faith people 
become negligent in good works. We ought not to speak 
with such emphasis of grace as to suggest the poisonous 
teaching which destroys free will. Although pure love is 
the highest motive for God’s service we ought to praise 
the fear of God, because it is a great help to rising out 
of mortal sin. 

These are the orthodox statements on the points chiefly 
in dispute with the heretics. 


CHAPTER XIX 
HIS VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 


Ignatius Loyola’s view of the world as the scene of a 
continuous active combat between God and Satan was 
rooted in his early experience. He tells in his Confes- 
sions how early he learned to recognize the diversity of 
the spirits which moved him. When he discovered the 
trick of the devil in giving him pleasure and consolation 
by the beautiful figure like a serpent, he always drove it 
away, with a contemptuous flourish of his pilgrim staff. 
(See page 44.) 

One more struggle he had; not against the craft but 
against the terror of the infernal adversaries. Four or 
five years later, when he was at the University of Alcala, 
he was charitably given lodging, in a somewhat ruinous 
part of a house which was popularly thought to be in- 
fested with nocturnal evil spirits. There Ignatius was 
smitten by a sudden terror which he reasoned was idle 
and, commending himself to God, he began in his soul and 
by words, to challenge the demons, that if God gave them 
any power over him, they should use it. He said he would 
willingly suffer whatever God let them do and they were 
not able to do anything more.’ That firmness of soul and 
that ready faith and confidence in God not only freed 
him then from all fear of the devil but made him always 
afterwards immune to such terrors of the night. 

For Ignatius plainly rose out of all fright before the 
unseen world, saw in the activity of the infernal host only 
a challenge to chivalrous knights errant of Christ, feared 


1Pol. I, 34, compare Ribad. ed. 1572, p. 197. 
285 


286 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the craft not the power of its leader and bade his followers 
be bold and treat him like a vixenish woman. He said 
the only danger was in cowardice for he believed with his 
beloved friend, Francis Xavier, that “showing a timid 
heart before the devil is strongly to be guarded against.” 
All fear of the devil and what he might do to him had dis- 
appeared from the soul of Ignatius long before he founded 
the Company. 

His younger contemporary, the mystic St. Theresa, 
reached the same result of fearlessness by a different way. 
Ignatius never saw devils, at least he does not tell us of 
seeing any. St. Theresa saw them so often that familiarity . 
bred contempt. For instance she writes: “I was once 
in an oratory when Satan in an abominable shape ap- 
peared on my left hand... . A huge flame seemed to 
issue out of his body. He spoke in a fearful way, and 
said to me that, though I had escaped out of his hands, 
he would yet lay hold of me again.” At another time, 
“T saw close beside me a frightful little negro gnashing 
his teeth.”” On another occasion, “I saw a great multi- 
tude of evil spirits round about me. One day when I was 
in prayer I saw a devil close by in a great rage tearing 
to pieces some paper he held in his hands.” She found 
a remedy against these hideous visitors. “I know by 
frequent experience that there is nothing which puts 
devils to flight like holy water.”” When she thought the 
evil spirits would have suffocated her one night and “the 
sisters threw much holy water about, I saw a great troop 
of them rush away as if tumbling over a precipice.” 
Nothing in the least resembling these diabolic visions is 
to be found in the Confessions of Ignatius. Theresa her- 
self came to treat them as of little importance for she 
wrote: ‘‘These cursed spirits have tormented me so often 
and I am now so little afraid of them, that I should weary 

? Pol. I, 460. 


HIS VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 287 


both you and myself if I were to speak of these things 
in detail.’* 

Many of the early comrades of Ignatius were unable 
to reach this serene contempt of danger from devils. In 
reading the Chronicle of their activities condensed from 
their own accounts of it, one is impressed by the fre- 
quent cases of troublesome, dangerous or successful inter- 
ference by the devil with their labours. In Sicily, where 
many were possessed by devils, the Rector of the College 
at Messina pointed out that it was not to be wondered 
at, because Messina was in a valley called by the name 
of the devil and not very far “from a certain open mouth 
into hell; as some of the saints of great authority had 
asserted.”* This idea about volcanic actions was not 
singular to the rector of Messina. For, when the heathen 
inhabitants near a volcanic isle whose recent eruption 
had killed fish in the sea and animals on land, asked the 
missionary, St. Francis Xavier, what it was, he replied 
that: “It was hell from which the souls of those who had 
worshipped idols were being thrown out.’’® 

The soldiers of the Company sometimes waged battles 
with the devil over the beds of the dying. When a novice 
of eighteen years was close to death and the demons 
attacked him, he clung tightly to the crucifix, and when 
they tried to tempt him away from the faith he told his 
father superior about it. The superior warned him not 
to dispute but to refer any devils who wished to dispute, 
to him. The lad did this and sent the demons to Father 
Cornelius that he might give them reasons for the faith 
that was in him. ‘So those who by disobedience fell 
from heaven were conquered by obedience.’’® 

When one of the leading citizens of Salamanca was 
in the last throes of life ‘‘and many nobles and monks 
of other orders stood round his bed, and they kept silent, 


*® Autobiography XXXI, 2, 3, 4,9 XXIV 5, etc. ‘Pol. II, 543. ®Pol. I, 205. 
°Pol. II, 230. | 


288 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


either from shyness or by the orders of others present, 
Father Torres of the Company did his best to arm the 
dying man against the temptations of the devil and, filled 
with a flame of love, exhorted him, now crying in his ear, 
to suggest weapons to use against the devil, and again 
consoling and encouraging him. To the astonishment of 
those present he kept this up for five hours without 
stopping, so that after many days he could hardly re- 
cover his former voice from hoarseness.”’ Father Niger 
at Ferrara “from the beginning of Sunday night spent 
twelve whole hours in passing into the other world or in 
agony and fought so bravely that the spectacle stirred 
the great admiration of ours. It was seen that he disputed ~ 
with the devil and stood manfully to the combat. But 
the end was sweet and tranquil and his face after the 
soul had left the body more devout and beautiful than 
in life.’’* 

Violent assaults of devils upon men in full health and 
strength are reported. As for example the cases of two 
citizens of Lisbon who were being instructed in the Chris- 
tian life by ours. A man holding a high position in the 
administration of justice ‘“‘rose one day before light, ac- 
cording to his custom, and went down without a candle 
to a certain little room. When he had settled himself in 
the usual place to pray, he received such a blow on the 
head that, to some extent he lost consciousness and 
thought he had received a great wound on the head for 
blood flowed from his mouth and injured gums. But he 
began to call on the name of Jesus and recognized that 
he suffered that from the devil and casting aside fear he 
did not omit his prayer.” ° The other man was on his 
knees with hands uplifted for prayer, when a most vile 
looking blackamoor appeared to him who seized his hands 
and with mocking words dragged him through the lit- 
tle room, threw him down a steep staircase and then 

"Pol. II, 325. ® Pol. V, 134. ° Pol. II, 685. 


HIS VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 289 


kicked him and trampled on him. But two boys clad 
in white stood by him, encouraged him until dawn and 
consoled him. The next day when he was scourging him- 
self at night and was finishing the penance, he perceived, 
as it were, a weight on his back and before his eyes a 
shade, black and thick. He was compelled to fall on his 
face. Then the shade, twisting the scourge out of the 
hands of the man, scourged him most cruelly. When he 
had borne this patiently, the same boys of the previous 
day consoled him until he fell asleep in that very place.” *° 

This experience of being beaten by devils evidently 
seemed to many of the early members of the Company 
the honourable mark of a good fighter for God, because 
they told how it happened to Ignatius himself about the 
time when he was elected general. 

Ribadeneira writes, “One night when Ignatius was 
sleeping, the devil, as it is believed, tried to suffocate him. 
He tried to strangle him, grasping his throat as if by a 
hand so strongly that Ignatius could not by any effort 
invoke the holy name of Jesus. But when he strung the 
nerves of his soul and body to the utmost, repelling force 
by force, he broke out at last with a most sweet voice 
and called out Jesus; by which voice the attempt of the 
devil was repulsed. From this struggle Ignatius (as we 
afterwards saw and noticed) was somewhat hoarse and 
without voice. I noticed that he was hoarse and I heard 
this if I am not mistaken in the year 1541.” *’ Ribadeneira 
heard this incident when he was fourteen and recorded 
it forty-five years later. He recorded also another tale 
of an attack of devils on Ignatius. ‘I have heard from 
John Paul who was for a long time the attendant of 
Ignatius, a similar story. John was sleeping in a little 
room next to Ignatius and a certain stormy night he 
was wakened from sleep and seemed to hear the sound 


oer II, 685. * Rib. 609. Not in first life. Compare de actis, Scripta, I, 
345. 


290 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


of blows and a noise as if of strong men beating Ignatius 
and the groans and sighs of Ignatius. He immediately 
ran to Ignatius and found him sitting up in bed with the 
covering pressed to his breast in his arms as if erect and 
unconquered and ready to receive blows. John said to 
him ‘What is this, Father? What do I hear? What do 
Iseer’ Ignatius answered ‘What have you heard?’ When 
he told, ‘Go back,’ said Ignatius, ‘and go to sleep.’ John 
went back to his room and a little while afterwards heard 
Ignatius being severely beaten. He ran to him and found | 
him unmoved but as if panting from a great fight and 
struggle of soul. He was ordered a second time to go back 
to bed and sleep and not to get up again.””” 

It is noticeable that even so long afterwards, Ignatius 
is not quoted as authority for these two stories. Nor 
did Ribadeneira put them into his first life of the founder. 
He says in regard to one tale “‘it is believed,” “I heard” 
(manifestly not from Ignatius) and “I noticed that he 
was hoarse.” In regard to the second story he records, 
thirty years after Ignatius’ death, that John Paul told 
him that, in his youth, he woke out of sleep hearing blows 
in the next room, ran in to find Ignatius sitting up as if 
ready to fight the devil and was told to go back to 
sleep. (19) 

No experience with devils in the least like these two 
is alluded to in any of the writings or sayings of Loyola, 
although he wrote a good deal about discerning of spirits. 
If he had gone through such an experience, or thought 
he had, it would have been extremely natural for him 
to warn his followers by telling them about it and not 
have left them to infer it. The argument often used 
by his biographers when they find it necessary to account 
for the silence of Ignatius in regard to some supernatural 
incident, is that his humility kept him from speaking of 
it. The argument in general is a very poor one. In the 

* Rib. Second life, Bk. V, End of Cap. 9. 


HIS VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 291 


first place Ignatius was not shy in telling his experiences 
to those who might profit by them. Secondly, Ribadeneira 
gives us the following brief record of a conversation on 
this very point. “Ignatius was accustomed to talk very 
freely about his affairs and showed the greatest security 
against the sin of vain-glory. When I said to him that 
anyone who did not know him might suspect in him at 
times vainglory or boasting, he said to me there was no 
sin he was so little afraid of as that.’”’*® 

Ignatius believed in devils but was not in the least 
afraid of them. Many of his followers were. Such psycho- 
logical experiences as those related were honestly recorded 
and accepted without question on their face value. It 
is conceivable that they might have been unconsciously 
distorted in the record; they may conceivably be only 
nervous reactions or contagious moods, they may conceiv- 
ably be what those who recorded or believed in them 
thought they were, terrifying demonstrations of the power 
of immortal malignant beings. Take any explanation you 
choose and it still remains true that such experiences come 
only to people who live in a mental atmosphere where 
there is a good deal of fear of devils. 

The most illuminating instance of this fear and the 
contrasted courage of Ignatius, is to be found in the 
strange story told by Oliver Manareus, Rector of the 
College at Loreto, in a solemn deposition made, in the 
cold blood of mature age, years after the events de- 
scribed. “Asked if he had seen something of these spec- 
tres, he said they greatly vexed the college in many ways. 
The devil appeared to a Belgian novice in the form of 
a black man clothed in green and tried to tempt him to 
give up his intention to enter the Company. When the 
lad resisted and made the sign of the cross, the demon 
said: ‘You won’t listen to good advice’ and blew into his 
face stinking smoke which infected the room and the 


#8 Dicta et facta, Scripta, I, 395. 


292 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


hall in front of it for two days with a fetid smell plainly 
perceived by the deponent and many others. To another 
novice from Sardinia, the demon appeared in the form 
of the Apostle Paul advising him to lay aside Cicero and 
read the Epistles. The lad said nothing to his spiritual 
director but, trusting in himself, found great delight in 
reading Paul: the more so because he was acting against 
holy obedience.” 

When some of the brethren were praying the devil beat 
upon the stool where they kneeled or purred like a cat 
over their heads. Once when a young Englishman about 
twenty-three years old was eating supper the demon hit 
him so hard in the right side that he fell over backward 
pale and contorted. The demon leaped upon the bed of 
others in the form of a puppy which frightened them 
very much. But Manareus and three or four of the older 
brethren took great pains to suppress talk about the sit- 
uation lest the fact that the house was haunted by demons 
should be noised abroad. The rector formed the habit of 
walking up and down in the hall for some hours on stormy 
nights in order to be able to help at once any young 
brethren attacked by the devil, and all the younger 
brethren were instructed, if the devil appeared to order 
him in the name of God to go to him. So it hap- 
pened more than once that the devil came and beat on 
his door in the dead of night. He was ill for many nights 
with fever which made him sleepless; but one night he got 
a little sleep. The demon then beat on the door and the 
rector, thinking it to be one of the brethren told him to 
come in, but the knocking was repeated again and again. 
At last the rector guessed that it must be the demon and 
called out, “Open in the name of the Lord.” ‘Then the 
demon threw open the doors and windows with a great 
crash and din as if they were smashed. . . . ‘““‘When the 
rector was a little better he heard once in the middle of 
the night a great noise like an earthquake in a remote 


HIS VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 293 


part of the house. He got up and walked around and 
lo! the noise came towards him. At first he was terror- 
stricken but recovering his self control and arming him- 
self with the sign of the cross, he turned toward the re- 
fectory where the noise and movement seemed to be. The 
noise grew louder and louder and finally there appeared a 
huge black dog with horrible burning eyes coming straight 
at him. Again he armed himself with the sign of the 
cross and stood firm. Then the dog, swerving toward the 
right side, three times, if he remembers rightly, barked 
with a very powerful bark, but one that sounded muffled 
as if it came out of some sort of vase, and let him go. 
No one ever saw the dog again. 

“When sprinkling holy water, the ritual for exorcism 
and prayers could not stop the evil, the rector wrote to 
Father Ignatius who advised the rites of the Church. The 
rector let him know that he had used them in every pos- 
sible way, but that the evil grew worse and he was afraid 
the thing might become known outside the house and so 
cause their adversaries to scatter abroad many evil reports. 

“The blessed man then wrote other letters exhorting the 
brethren to patience and trust in God, saything that he 
would pray for them and adding he was confident that, 
by the goodness of God, they would in a short time be set 
free from their troubles. The rector called together all 
the brethren, read the letters to them and ordered them 
to have good hopes from the prayers and merits of such a 
father as Ignatius. His faith and hope were not in vain 
for, when the letters had been read, that evil was totally 
removed by God and the devils could never do anything 
more against the dwellers in the college for they were 
never seen or heard of again.” * (20) 

The modern reader, whether Catholic or Protestant, 
will suspect in this story certain elements which the man 
of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, whether Cath- 

* Acta Sanct. 598 July. VII. 


294 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


-olic or Protestant, would not have suspected in it: the re- 
actions in mass psychology of highly irritated nervous 
systems, the panic of contagious cowardice, perhaps the 
malignant pranks of an hysterical boy; certainly the half 
recollected delirium of a frightened and fever stricken 
man. But to forget all this and put oneself back in the 
sixteenth century, still leaves us two things to wonder 
at: the long reign over the hearts of university educated 
men of idle fears, suspending their reason, weakening 
their wills, obscuring their faith; and the power over the 
hearts of his followers of Ignatius, who dissipated at once 
the whole dark atmosphere of spiritual weakness by the 
written word of his trust in God. This is indeed in any 
sense you choose to take it “to have power to cast out 
unclean spirits.” 

If Ignatius was not in the least afraid of devils, his 
followers believed that devils were very much afraid of 
him and therefore hated him with a very special hatred. 

As they had experiences of devils localized in haunted 
buildings, so they had frequent experiences of devils 
dwelling in human bodies: the demoniacs. In these cases 
they assumed that the haunting devil spoke in the ravings 
of the man or woman who was “‘possessed.”’ Among such 
utterances they found the clearest proof of the fear and 
hatred of Ignatius among the hosts of hell. 

During the solemn ecclesiastical procedure leading 
towards canonization begun forty years after Ignatius’ 
death, his aged friend Ribadeneira was asked what he 
thought about the character of Ignatius. He gave as one 
reason for thinking him a saint: “the great hatred which 
the devil always had for Ignatius which he constantly ex- 
pressed in persecutions. If the brethren were together 
without Ignatius and all was quiet, when he came among 
them some storm and tempest was always aroused by the 
devil because he hated Ignatius.” (It is noticeable that 
Ignatius never makes the smallest allusion to anything 


HIS VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 295 


of the sort). Lainez told him that at Padua a poor sol- 
dier possessed of the devil—a man who had never seen 
Ignatius—described him perfectly, saying he was the 
greatest enemy that he (the devil in the man) had. 
When a certain demoniac was told that Ignatius was 
coming to drive out his devil he uttered screams, crying: 
“Tgnatius is my greatest enemy.” Another demon who 
possessed a man in Sicily said the same thing in the 
presence of the viceroy and the provincial of the Com- 
pany. Ribadeneira adds: “This seems to me excellent 
testimony. For, though the devil is not to be believed 
when he speaks of himself, he is trustworthy in what 
God forces him to say for the glory of His saints.” 
After the death of Ignatius, his followers believed that 
his pictures or relics had the same power to control and 
anger demons that his name had possessed while he was 
alive. We say his name because it is noteworthy that 
there is no testimony from the primary sources that 
Ignatius was present when these scenes of the confes- 
sions of devils took place. Three instances of this power 
of the picture or bones of Ignatius taken from the Acta 
Sanctorum, the official biography of Loyola published in 
1731, will serve as examples. The first is dated at Siena 
five years after his death. ‘‘An honest and simple girl who 
was waiting maid to a noble lady was somewhat haunted 
by demons, who appeared to her in various shapes and 
beat her with astonishing cruelty. For twelve years she 
- was involved in that calamity. When however she began 
to carry about with her a picture of the blessed Father, 
the impure spirits, though they appeared to her and or- 
dered her to throw away the picture, never dared to touch 
her. The girl even mocked them, daring them to strike 
her but, so long as she had the picture, they never dared 
to do it. When however, being curious to test absolutely 
whether this fear of the demons came from the picture of 
* Scripta, II, p. 150. 


296 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


the blessed Father, she laid it aside, the demons at once 
attacked her and beat her so severely that they left her 
half dead. After that she kept the picture with her and 
the devils could only pound the walls and furniture of her 
room.” *° 

Another is dated thirty-six years later. ‘A priest in 
Rome about to recite the ritual for exorcism took in his 
hands a reliquary which contained the relics of many 
saints and also of Ignatius (who was not yet made a saint). 
The devil called out that he was afraid of the relics of 
blessed Father Ignatius now in heaven, still unrecognized 
on earth, but soon to be consecrated a saint. The priest 
hung the reliquary around the neck of the woman. Where- ~ 
upon the devil in her howled and cried aloud that the 
relics of Father Ignatius burnt him and departed from the 
woman.” *” 

The third example of these stories was printed thirty 
years after the date of the second. In Poland, ‘a demon 
entered into a noble lady who like all her family was a 
heretic. The heretics frequently consulted together about 
freeing her from this enemy, but, as none of them dared 
to try it, they asked the Rector of the College of the 
Company to help her. One of the most urgent in their 
request was so insanely tenacious of Calvinism that he 
often said he would sooner be converted into a dog or a 
pig than a papist. Arrived at the house, the rector per- 
forms the rites of the Church for exorcism and secretly 
touches the woman with relics of Ignatius: whereupon she 
trembles and the devil calls out that he is tormented by the 
relics of Ignatius. The rector, desiring to cure not only 
the possessed but also the heretics, orders them to offer 
the Institutes of Calvin to the devil. He accepts them, to 
their great surprise, says they are wonderfully grateful 
and pleasant and warmly kisses them (by the lips of the 
woman of course). But when the rector offers him the 

7° Acta Sanct. p. 803 B. ™” Act. Sanct. p. 803 E. 


HIS VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 297 


same volume (after slyly slipping into it a picture of 
Ignatius) as soon as it is held out, the demon draws back 
howling in fury. Compelled to confess what he was afraid 
of in it, “You ask that,’ he said, ‘When you have put in 
it a picture of Saint Ignatius?’ The devil is finally cast 
out of the lady who rejects Calvinism and returns to the 
Chirch??** 

In regard to all this dealing with the devil three things 
ought to be noticed by those who wish to get a true picture 
of Ignatius. First that the farther we get away from him 
the more frequent and the more crass do these tales of 
physical diabolic action become. The devil plays an ex- 
tremely minor role in the Confessions. Secondly, in these 
three typical specimens of diabolic activity after Ignatius’ 
death, an attentive eye can observe elements that do not 
appear in earlier testimony about his power over the un- 
seen world: i.e. the strange curiosity of the terribly af- 
flicted girl, completing, positively as well as negatively, 
the logical proof that it was the picture of Ignatius which 
made the devils stop beating her; or the clearness with 
which the devil singles out the relics of Ignatius as more 
effective than those of many other saints even though the 
Church had not yet officially pronounced him a saint; or 
the usefulness in debate of the story how the devil kissed 
Calvin’s Institutes (nicknamed the Bible of the Heretics). 
The contrast between incidents like these and the trust in 
God conquering the terrors of the night ** or the contempt 
which drives an unmasked Satan away as if he were a 
troublesome dog,’ seems to the writer to show fairly 
enough the difference between the figure of Ignatius as it 
appears in the earliest sources and the edifying or polemic 
Jesuit Lives of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies. (21) 

The third point to be noticed about any of these ideas 


18 Acta Sanct, p. 820, b. 7 Ribadeneira, Bk. V, Cap. 9, Second Life. Pol. 
I, 34. * Confessions, 55 


298 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


concerning the unseen universe or any of these stories of 
the activity of devils is this. There is nothing in them, 
the crass as well as the more spiritual, which can in any 
particular sense be called Jesuit. The same ideas were 
held, similar stories were generally adopted as true dur- 
ing centuries before Loyola was born, during his lifetime 
and for generations after his death by Jesuit and non- 
Jesuit, Protestant and Catholic alike without very much 
distinction. 

Demoniac possession, in which men were tormented and 
devils spoke by their mouth, is a prominent thing in the 
gospel life of Christ; who gave His apostles power to cast 
out devils. By the end of the fourth century the Church © 
had a regular order of exorcists among the minor clergy, 
who received from the hands of the bishop a book with 
forms for driving out devils which they were told to com- 
mit to memory.” The medieval chronicles abound in 
stories of the activity of the devil in the physical life of 
man. 

Among Protestants who were contemporaries of Igna- 
tius demoniac possession began gradually to disappear. 
But two hundred years after Ignatius the great Protestant 
preacher, John Wesley, reports in his journal cases he con- 
siders evident examples of it.” A missionary writes from 
Nova Scotia about a visit to a demoniac who had to be 
restrained from assaulting him by the strength of four 
men. The missionary fell on his knees in prayer, where- 
upon the frenzy subsided and the man began to praise 
Christ. Wesley writes, “It is well that Satan is con- 
strained to show himself plainly in the case of these poor 
demoniacs.”’*? He tells how he himself went to see a wo- 
man who “was in a way nobody could understand.” He 
sang a verse or two of a hymn beside her bed and kneeled 
down to pray. “I had just begun when I felt as if I had 


“Dictionary Christian Antiquities. Exorcist. ™ Journal, III, 300, 346-348. 
* Journal, I, 401. 


HIS VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 299 


been plunged into cold water and immediately there was 
such a roar that my voice was quite drowned though I 
spoke as loud as I usually do to three or four thousand 
people. However I prayed on. Then she was reared up 
in the bed, her whole body moving at once without bending 
one joint or limb just as if it were one piece of stone. Im- 
mediately afterward it was writhed into all kinds of pos- 
tures, the same horrid yell continuing still. But we left 
her not until she was rejoicing and praising God.” ** 

In the present day these phenomena so common for so 
many generations have become very rare.”” A _psychol- 
ogist has recently written ‘We are able to produce 
and cure demoniacal possession in our laboratories.” I 
do not know whether this claim is sound or not, but it 
seems to be evident that these phenomena do not now 
spontaneously occur among people, whether Catholic or 
Protestant, who do not expect and fear that they may 
occur. 

One special form of the belief in the power of Satan 
or his evil angels to interfere directly in the bodily life 
of man was not weakened among Protestants when they 
seceded from the Roman Catholic Church. That was the 
belief in witchcraft or the power of human beings to sell 
their souls to the devil and to receive in return certain 
infernal pleasures, in the worship of Satan and certain 
malignant physical power over their fellows. This was a 
belief whose acceptance was for generations almost as uni- 
versal as its rejection is now. Witchcraft was in most 
countries a crime at civil law punishable by death, and, 
under those laws, there perished in all European coun- 
tries uncounted thousands of victims. The cowardly 
superstition crossed the Atlantic and stained the records 
of our colonial life with innocent blood. Its influence 
lasted until the nineteenth century. Witches died by 


* Journal, III, 63, 1743. ™ Not long ago they were described as occurring in 
a certain district of China. 


300 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


law in Switzerland, Spain, and Prussian Poland at the end 
of the eighteenth century. The cruelty and injustice 
which grew out of this belief may be judged from an in- 
stance in a work written by a Lutheran pastor, Anton 
Pratorius, who believed that there were witches but 
pleaded for mercy and common sense in the administration 
of the law against them. In 1597 women who were tor- 
tured and burnt in a neighbouring village denounced four 
women of his parish as witches. One of these hanged her- 
self in prison, two died under the torture to make them 
confess, and the fourth was put to the torture. But when 
Pratorius heard of it, he ran to the castle and beat on the © 
door of the torture room until they opened and he was 
able to stop it, but the woman died shortly after.” 

The truly diabolic circle of malice or fear, torture, con- 
fession and false accusation to escape otherwise endless 
agony, fresh arrests, new torture, confession and false ac- 
cusation, brought victims by the scores to the stake and 
the scaffold, and the accursed process went on during gen- 
erations. 

Luther who died ten years before Loyola not only ac- 
cepted the basal beliefs on which this devastating su- 
perstition rested, but he also endorsed the terrible laws 
which grew out of those beliefs. From the pulpit he de- 
manded the death of witches.” At the end of one sermon 
he cried, “We know some of these witches. If they do 
not repent we will order them into the hands of the 
public torturer. . . . Take care or you will be found out 
and come to the torture bench.” * 

Every protest against these laws and in many countries 
there were brave protesters, was answered among the 
Catholics by the authority of the Church, among the Prot- 
estant by the Bible; because in Exodus it says, ‘Thou 
shalt not suffer a sorceress to live.” * Calvin commented 


7° Paulus, 187. ™ Weimar ed. XVI, 5351. ™ Weimer, XXIX, 320. ™Ex. 
XXII, 18. 


HIS VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 301 


in the pulpit on this text as follows: “It is not to be 
doubted that this law retains its force today among Chris- 
tians and therefore certain impure and profane men, de- 
spisers of the Word of God, should be driven out because 
they think it ridiculous to wish to exterminate this sort 
of witches and diviners—as if God speaking by his 
prophets could be deceived in prohibiting every kind of 
divination and magic.” *° 

The same cruel law reaped a harvest of death in England 
during the seventeenth century; though a smaller one 
because the English law prohibited the use of torture. 
When the English statute against witchcraft was repealed 
in 1736, the reality of witchcraft was still maintained 
by many pious persons on the ground of the authority 
of the book of Exodus. John Wesley wrote in 1768, 
“Tt is true that the English in general and most of the 
men of learning in Europe have given up all accounts of 
witches and apparitions as mere old wives’ fables. I am 
sorry for it.” ... “Infidels have hooted witchcraft out of 
the world.” . . . “They well know (whether Christians 
know it or not) that the giving up of witchcraft is in ef- 
fect giving up the Bible.”* 

Luther had been brought up in surroundings where fear 
of witches was rampant. He believed his own mother had 
suffered from the diabolic spells of a neighbour which 
made her children ‘“‘nearly scream themselves to death.’ 
Loyola also had been born and brought up in a region 
where belief in the power of witches was widespread.” 
Its strength may be sufficiently measured by the fact that 
the following story is told with full belief by Sandoval, one 
of the historiographers of the Emperor Charles V and bis- 
hop of Pamplona; where Ignatius was wounded: “The 
witch took her unguent and went up to the window of a 
very high tower and in the presence of a large crowd 


® Opera, XXX, 631. * Wesley’s Journal, V, 265, 375. ™ Tischreden, Weimar 
ed. III, 2982 (6). “S Hansen, 402 n. 


302 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


anointed herself with the unguent. That finished, she said 
in a loud voice, ‘Are you there?’ to which another voice 
answered, ‘Yes, I am here.’ Then the woman began to 
crawl down the wall head downward on her hands and 
feet like a lizard. Halfway down the wall she launched in- 
to the air in the sight of all and flew off, and was afterwards 
found three miles away.” *° Ignatius had been brought 
up a few miles from Pamplona where such a story could 
be related with full belief, in the serious historical work of 
2 learned bishop. During his life both in Italy and Spain, 
a procession of witches was being sent to the stake. For 
example, in the diocese of Como, for a dozen years about 
a thousand were accused each year and about a hundred 
burnt, while in the Val Camonica the priests, calling for 
episcopal visitation, said 5000 out of a population of 50,- 
000 were witches. One ex-inquisitor of Sicily gave thanks 
to God that in the last 150 years the inquisitors had burnt 
at least 30,000 witches. This superstition of witchcraft 
would have been scorned by both Cicero and Paul. Yet 
it flourished in those ages of the Renascence which ap- 
pealed to the intellectual influence of both and for gen- 
erations continued to paralyze the thinking and harden 
the hearts of men holding all varieties of Christian belief. 

But in spite of the predisposing influences of a youth 
spent among the superstitious Basques, Ignatius resisted 
this contagion of opinion and example. His constant vi- 
sion of life as a great combat between God and His angels 
and the devil and his ministers would have made it easy 
for him to become active as a witch hater, but his writ- 
ings and his familiar talk reported by his intimates are 
entirely free from traces of that fear of witches, which 
in his own generation and in many succeeding generations, 
produced such terrible results of cruelty and injustice. 

* Cited Hansen, 503. 


CHAPTER XX 
THE MYSTIC 


Ignatius himself has told us that he had many wonder- 
ful visions of unseen things. Only one of these was a 
vision of evil; an often repeated figure in whose beauty 
he took much pleasure until he discovered accidentally that 
it came from the devil. Whereupon he drove it away, and, 
though for a long while it came back, he always banished it 
with contempt. For he seems to have had a certain amount 
of control over these visions and other extraordinary in- 
ner religious experiences. When he began a long course 
of study to make himself better able to help men, he found 
that his inner spiritual experiences prevented him from 
studying the Latin grammar. He decided they had be- 
come temptations and laid them aside. During the three 
years and a half he studied in Barcelona and in Alcala 
and the seven years he studied in Paris, he apparently had 
no visions. It may be conjectured that this means he 
could put himself into the mood in which visions came to 
him and, when he kept himself out of that mood or at- 
titude of soul, they did not come. Later in life he told 
- Camara he could “find”? God whenever he needed Him; * 
by which he probably meant feeling himself in direct com- 
munication with God from which visions or other spiritual 
illuminations would arise. This does not mean that he 
could have visions whenever he wanted. But more than 
ten years without them—a lack of spiritual delight of 
which he does not complain—would seem to indicate that 


* Confessions, p. 55, 69, 85, 97. 
303 


304 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


his iron will could stop or prevent them when he thought 
duty required it. 

His first vision was not at all voluntary but a delightful 
surprise. Lying awake one night soon after he had defin- 
itely decided not to go back to his old life but to imitate 
the saints, he suddenly saw Our Lady with the Holy Child, 
one of the many visions which wrought an especial effect 
on him. For, though he had led the carelessly licentious 
life of a young Spanish noble of the day, he never after 
this vision felt the least desire for carnal indulgence.’ His 
next vision after the thing like a beautiful serpent, which 
was a trick of the devil, was a guiding vision. He had 
for a long time eaten no meat and one morning when he > 
got up “he saw, as if he saw it with his bodily eyes, meat 
ready to eat,” and concluded that God meant he should 
eat meat. His confessor suspected this might be a tempt- 
ing vision sent by the devil, but Ignatius could not doubt 
that it was a sign from God. 

Not long after he had five visions of the Trinity, the 
creation, transubstantiation, the humanity of Christ, and 
the whole body of theology and these five, with his first vi- 
sion, give us specimens of the three sorts of visions 
which came to him during the rest of his life. The 
first sort is a distinct vision which needs no explanation, 
like the Virgin Mary appearing to him at night in Loyola. 
This was rare in his experience. In only one instance did 
he hear any words as Paul during his converting vision 
heard a voice “speaking in the Hebrew tongue.” * Igna- 
tius evidently needed no words to explain his visions be- 
cause, some time after the only vision in which he heard 
words, he had forgotten precisely what the words were.* 

The second sort of vision which came to him might be 
called symbolic visions. These were by far the most com- 
mon, in his experience. He saw, for example, the Holy 
Trinity like three keys of an organ. ‘These symbolic 

* Confessions, p. 42. * Acts, XXVI, 14. “Confessions, p. 95. 


THE MYSTIC 305 


visions whose meaning he immediately recognized, usually 
took some form of light. How God created the world was 
shown him by “a white thing from which came rays out 
of which God made light,” white rays coming down from 
above showed him Christ in the bread and wine. He saw 
the humanity of Christ “like a white body not very big and 
not very small.” He saw Christ “as a large round gold 
thing,” etc.” He frequently says he saw these visions with 
“the inner eyes,” and as he had many of them in public 
it is evident that they were not visible to others. Some- 
times a vision lasted a long time, for example during the 
walk from the Mount of Olives to the monastery in Jeru- 
salem he saw Christ all the way over the head of his 
companions.° The same vision was often repeated up to 
as many as forty times.’ 

But although these visions were seen by the inner eye, 
there always seemed to be something about them external 
to his personality; for he could distinguish perfectly be- 
tween them and his own thoughts or imaginations. When 
he was on his way back to Spain from Jerusalem, Spanish 
soldiers in an Italian town, after partly stripping him to 
search him as a spy, were leading him to their captain 
through three long streets, and he had a “representation 
of Christ being led through the streets of Jerusalem”; but 
he adds: “It was not a vision like the others,” for these 
visions did not suspend his reason nor weaken his will 
power. He was able to decide by reason that a vision 
must be evil and for long years to suspend all visions when 
he judged that for a time they interfered with the holy 
purpose of his life. 

He records a third class of spiritual experiences which 
are called “visions” for want of a better title. They were 
distinct inner enlightenments giving certainty of under- 
standing of intellectual matters by a direct gift of God 
without any reasoning. The most important of these is 


5 Confessions, 62. * Confessions, p. 65. * Confessions, p. 54. 


306 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


described as “a great illumination without seeing any 
vision.” He says it taught him so much about “things of 
faith and learning and gave him such a great clearness of 
understanding, that all the divine help and all he has 
learned during thirty years since, have not profited him 
so much.”® He had this experience before he had made 
any studies in theology and it may serve not only as an 
example of the similar less extensive illuminations which 
came to him, but also as a measure of how immutable his 
theological ideas were. 

The Confessions of Ignatius give us a brief sketch of 
his memories of his inner life up to about the age of forty- 
seven. From that time on we have only letters and the 
scattered reminiscences of some of his intimate followers; 
except for one very remarkable document. This is a diary 
of his spiritual experiences for nearly a year written be- 
tween the ages of fifty-six and fifty-nine. 

It consists of two parts. In the second part, very little 
of which has been printed, there are brief notes of his 
religious experiences and sensations during three hundred 
and eleven days. The first part, printed in full,? gives an 
account of his soul’s experience for forty days when he was 
seeking the guidance of God on a point in the Constitu- 
tions—whether the houses of the Company should own 
any income-bearing property or practise complete poverty. 
The diary is preceded by a document in which are set down 
sixteen distinct numbered reasons for poverty with eight 
reasons in favour of having an income and he notes that 
he frequently thought over these during the experiences 
of the first fifteen days of the diary. After having care- 
fully reasoned the matter pro and con, he entered upon a 
series of masses from which he expected divine direction. 
His account of his experiences is confused and difficult to 
understand, as might be expected from such a hasty record 
of a highly mystical experience made by a man not facile 

® Confessions, p. 55. ® Appendix XVIII, De la Torre. 


THE MYSTIC 307 


in the use of words. He evidently succeeds in “finding” 
(his phrase is “to end with’) the Virgin, the Holy Ghost, 
the Son, the Father and the Holy Trinity, as distinct 
Spiritual existences from each of which he seeks aid and 
guidance. 

The first seven days when he seeks the aid of Our 
Lady, his experiences are comparatively tranquil and his 
mind is steadily inclined toward the choice of poverty. On 
the seventh day he spends two periods of an hour and a 
half each in going over the reasons and making his choice 
or decision, which is for poverty. He wishes to have this 
decision presented to the Father by the Mother and the 
Son as mediators. He repeats his study of the reasons for 
and against poverty and on the tenth day it seems to him 
that he ‘‘sees or feels the Holy Spirit in a clarity, dense or 
in the colour of a flaming fire.” That day he comes to 
feel that the matter is finished except for services of 
thanks and worship to the Father and the Holy Trinity. 
He does not offer these the next day, and the day after 
he feels he has failed and needs the intercession of the 
Mother and the Son to restore him to the earlier grace. 
The next day he ‘“‘feels” (perceives) that the Son is very 
propitious to intercede with the Father “seeing Him in 
a way which cannot be written nor the other things ex- 
plained.” The twenty-sixth day he has “supernaturally” 
an ‘intellectual vision of the Holy Trinity with Jesus 
in the midst,” and five days later ‘“‘he feels (or perceives) 
in a lucid clarity an essence which draws me wholly to 
His love” (the Holy Trinity). A few days later he feels 
(perceives) and sees “not obscurely but in lucidity and 
great lucidity, the same being, or Divine Essence, in a 
spherical figure a little larger than the sun appears to 
be and from that Essence the Father seemed to proceed 
or derive.” This was “the being of the Holy Trinity 
without distinction of the other persons.” A little later 
he sees the spherical vision and “the Father, Son and 


308 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Holy Ghost derived from the Divine Essence without 
going outside of it.” At night he saw the same thing; 
“not so large, clear or distinct but like a large ray of 
light.” 

During these forty days he records one hundred and 
twenty-nine times that he was moved to tears, ranging 
from “an inclination to tears” to ‘‘most intense,” “very 
abundant,” “many and very intense,” “I covered myself 
with tears.” He also mentions repeatedly that he could 
not articulate for a while. Most of this weeping came 
in connection with the mass he said every day. These 
weepings are mingled with intervals of “grace, suave, 
full of devotion warm, and very sweet.” These religious — 
exercises did not absorb all his time. He tells four 
times what happened when he went into the city, a thing — 
_ he never did except for some necessary business. He was 
not fasting, for he speaks of things happening before or 
after dinner, and he resists an “impulse not to eat.” 
Apparently he reaches his decision by the sixteenth day 
and feels nothing more need be done except to offer serv- 
ices of thanks. But he makes up his mind to seek a con- 
firmation of the decision from the Holy Trinity, not- 
withstanding the fact that he already has it from the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He does not 
obtain this and he says he becomes “provoked with the 
Holy Trinity.” His account of this is entirely free from 
any remote suggestion of irreverence and he speaks the 
next day of his intense love for the Trinity. He con- 
cludes it was ‘‘an evil mood which made him doubt and 
be indignant with the Holy Trinity.” Nevertheless he 
finds himself in an attitude where he needs “to be recon- 
ciled with the Holy Trinity” and seeks the intercession 
of Jesus “to obtain his pardon from the Holy Trinity.” 
This reconciliation is brought about by the disappear- 
ance from his soul of every sentiment “repugnant to it” 
(ie. The Holy Trinity) bringing him “a’ tranquillity and 


THE MYSTIC 309 


repose of soul” in which “he could not see or feel any of 
the former discord or disgust.” 

The confirmation of the Holy Trinity is finally given to 
him by Jesus. 

The present writer frankly confesses that he does not 
know what this mystic spiritual experience in connection 
with the Holy Trinity means. To be “indignant” with 
the Holy Trinity, to feel “discord” or “disgust” with the 
Holy Trinity and then to be “reconciled” with the Holy 
Trinity, suggest to him states of thought or feeling which 
he cannot even remotely imagine. He attempts, in spite 
of diffidence, to describe briefly Ignatius’ account of it, 
because, even imperfectly understood, it makes so plain 
the mystic character of the man who, his intimates tell 
us, always weighed with the utmost care all the reasons 
for every action and, in all practical affairs, showed such 
shrewd common sense knowledge of the average human 
heart. It is necessary to make plain this union of qual- 
ities, one might almost say of characters, in him, to show 
how extraordinary he was. 

Ignatius was subject to these remarkable religious ex- 
periences during thirty-five years after his conversion, ex- 
cept during the eleven years of his student life. Never- 
theless no one was more aware than he was of the danger 
that beset them. He saw that danger in a double form: 
truly pious people might be deceived by the craft of the 
devil as he was himself deceived for a time by the vision 
of the beautiful thing like a serpent; or deliberate hypo- 
crites might feign their experiences to deceive others. His 
knowledge of the human heart also evidently told him 
(though he had never studied in the modern fashion the 
extraordinary physical results of hysteria) that there might 
be a combination of these two dangers in the case of people 
whose heart was not firmly fixed on God but who were 
deceived by the devil, or their own emotions, into think- 
ing themselves more religious than they really were. 


310 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Very soon after his conversion he began to consider the 
first danger and to study ‘“‘discerning the spirits.” ‘To the 
Spiritual Exercises he appended twenty rules to guide the 
giver of them in teaching the taker how to discern spirits 
and he wrote, or approved, seven years before his death, 
a long discussion of some revelations he deemed false. A 
few examples will show his ideas abou judging visions and 
extraordinary religious experiences.’° 

William Postello was admitted to probation. He was 
a pious man of good character. He thought he had the 
spirit of prophecy and said and wrote things ‘neither true 
nor edifying.” Ignatius assigned three fathers to judge 
the case. They decided that although Postello’s “will was | 
good, nevertheless his spirit and prophecies were manifest 
illusions of the devil and nothing but human phantasies 
without any base whatever and fitted to deceive the curious 
and to work great harm and scandal in the Church of 
God.”** Postello refused to accept this judgment of those 
he had sworn to obey and was dismissed. 

Ribadeneira records that he had heard Father Reginald, 
a Dominican monk, tell Ignatius about a holy woman, in 
a coenobium under his spiritual care in Bologna, who fell 
frequently into states where she lay as if dead even when 
touched by flame. But she always heard and obeyed the 
voice of her mother superior. She had marks of nails on 
her hands and wounds like those of the crown of thorns on 
her head. Father Reginald had often seen them. He 
added that he himself did not dare either to approve or 
disapprove of them and asked the opinion of Ignatius. 
The latter replied “of all these things you have told, the 
sign most free from any doubt is the prompt obedience.” 
When they were alone Ribadeneira asked Ignatius what 
he thought. He replied, “God may fill souls with His 
grace and sometimes it may appear in bodily signs. The 
devil because he has not power over the soul often de- 

Letts, XII, 632. 1 Scripta, I, 709, Pol. 1, 149, May 10th, 1543. 


THE MYSTIC ag! 


ceives people by bodily signs, and he confirmed this opin- 
ion by examples.” ‘The woman came to a very bad end 
and all the flame ended in smoke.”’” 

Ribadeneira also heard conversations of Ignatius with 
the rector of Coimbra about a certain woman of Cor- 
dova in Spain, whose holiness he praised excessively. 
Ignatius told the rector his attitude was foolish and un- 
worthy of a member of the Company. Some years later 
this woman regarded in Spain “almost like a virgin fallen 
from heaven was caught as a plain hypocrite who for 
years had deceived people by fraud.”’*® 

It is a distortion of the figure of Ignatius to regard an 
experience with visions and illuminations as peculiar to 
him or even extremely exceptional. It is true that few 
people have left so detailed a record of such a continued 
series of visions as he wrote, but the lives of the medieval 
saints are filled with visions. For example Raymond 
Lull, a wealthy Catalan who had led a dissipated life had 
in 1266, as he tells us, a vision of Christ on the cross 
five times. As a consequence he gave his life to the cause 
of Mohammedan missions and was finally stoned to death 
in North Africa at the age of eighty. 

In the eighteenth century occurred the well known case 
of the conversion by a vision of James Gardiner. The 
distinguished preacher, Dr. Philip Doddridge, wrote down 
the story “the very evening I heard it from his own 
mouth.” Gardiner was then thirty-three, successful in 
his profession (he rose to the rank of Colonel) but averse 
to religion and with a reputation for debauchery. He 
was in his room reading to pass the time before a sinful 
rendezvous at midnight when “he saw an unusual blaze 
of light fall on the book which he at first thought came 
from some accident to the candle. But, lifting up his 
eyes, he apprehended to his extreme amazement that there 
was before him, as it were suspended in the air, a visible 

12 Ribadeneira, 620, not in first Life. ™ Rib. 623, not in first Life. 


312 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


representation of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross sur- 
rounded on all sides by a glory and a voice to this effect, 
‘Oh, Sinner! Did I suffer this for thee and are these 
the returns?’ But whether this was an audible voice or 
only a strong impression on his mind equally striking, 
he did not seem very confident.” The change in his life 
caused by this vision was immediate and permanent. For 
twenty-five years, until he fell trying to rally the defeated 
royal army at Prestonpans, he was the model of a Chris- 
tian soldier.”* 

Visions are still seen as a part of religious experiences 
which produce marked effects on life. Here is the authen- 
tic account of such an experience very recently recorded. A - 
young American minister who had neither peace nor zeal 
in his heart entered a little village church in Cumberland 
and joined a congregation of seventeen people. The leader 
of the service spoke of some aspect of the cross “and 
while he brooded on the idea, in a reverie of mind there 
came to him very palpably and with the most poignant 
realism, albeit with no suddenness or dramatic intensity, 
a vision of the crucified. . . . A wave of strong emotion 
seemed to lift his soul and bear it to the foot of the cross. 
There he made his surrender to the divine Will.” Asked 
some time afterward about his sensations, he said: “I 
remember one sensation very distinctly; it was a vibrant 
feeling up and down the spine as if a strong current of 
life had suddenly been poured into me. . . .” This vision 
was followed by “‘the happiness which came to him from 
his unbroken sense of the divine companionship.” This 
sense of the divine companionship has been expressed 
since in a career of great success in helping young men 
to gain faith and express it by their works.” 

Visions were especially common among the contem- 
poraries of Ignatius. Savonarola (executed 1498) has 
described his and they came frequently to St. Theresa, 

 Doddridge. * Begbie, 24-26. 


THE MYSTIC 313 


born six years before the conversion of St. Ignatius. Her 
greater facility in the use of language enables her to give 
in her autobiography a much more detailed account than 
the description of his visions by Ignatius. For example: 
“On one of the feasts of St. Paul when I was at mass 
there stood before me the most sacred humanity of Christ 
as paintings represent Him after the resurrection. .. . 
This vision I never saw with my bodily eyes, nor indeed 
any other vision, but only with the eyes of the soul... . 
If I were to spend many years in devising how to picture 
to myself anything so beautiful I could never be able 
. . . the whiteness and brilliancy alone are inconceivable. 
. . . It is like most pellucid water running in a bed of 
crystal reflecting the rays of the sun, compared with most 
muddy water on a cloudy day, flowing on the surface of 
the earth. Not that there is anything like the sun present 
here, nor is the light like that of the sun; this light seems 
to be natural; and, in comparison with it, every other 
light is something artificial... . In short, it is such 
that no man however gifted can ever in the whole course 
of his life arrive at any imagination of what it is.”** “On 
one occasion when I was holding in my hand the cross 
of my rosary Christ took it from me into His own hand. 
He returned it; but it was then four large stones incom- 
parably more precious than diamonds. . . . He said to 
me that, for the future that cross would appear so to me 
always; and soit did. . . . I never saw the wood of which 
it was made but only the precious stones. They were 
seen, however, by no one else—only by myself.”””” 
During the lifetime of Ignatius visions sometimes ap- 
peared to men not especially predisposed before or after 
them to religion. When that artistic ruffian Benvenuto 
Cellini, a younger contemporary of Ignatius, was arrested 
on the charge of stealing gold from the pope, he had in 


*® Autobiography of St. Theresa XXVIII 4. 7. 8 Lewis. VIb. XXIX 8. 


314 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


his dark cell a magnificent dream vision of the sun, “like 
a ball of molten gold forming itself first into a crucifix 
and then into a Madonna and Child.”** Ignatius, if he 
had heard of this vision and known Cellini’s entire lack 
of repentance for the murders and vices of his life, would 
have pronounced it a delusion of Satan. However that 
may be, there is no reason to doubt that Cellini -had this 
vision. His memory of it was so distinct that he made 
drawings and a wax model in order to reproduce it in gold 
or silver. | 

What modern psychologists can show us under the 
heading of visualization or hallucination in regard to such 
experiences as these is not, after all, of much importance 
for our purpose of trying to convey to the reader a clear 
understanding of the personality of Ignatius. The facts 
are that he and others before, during and since his day, 
have had these experiences; which, to some of them, be- 
came extremely vital elements to inspire conduct and form 
character. 

It is not to be supposed that Ignatius failed to realize 
that there were other temperaments besides the mystic 
temperament. It is notable that the Spiritual Exercises 
do not suggest or expect such exalted states of feeling 
as those which led to his visions and illuminations. A 
single paragraph from the Chronicle of the secretary of 
Ignatius, Polanco, makes plain that he and his comrades 
did not expect all men to follow the same path toward 
holiness. 

“Brother Dominic, in other respects a very excellent 
man, who proved that he had a high opinion of the Com- 
pany, was sometimes in the habit of making a little fun 
of our contemplations and confessed to one of ours that 
for his part he did not know how to think of God unless 
he had the gospel before him and since God was invisible 
He immediately withdrew from his eyes. He added that 

* Autobiography Bk. I XXII. 


THE MYSTIC 315 


he could not understand what those could think about 
who remained on their knees two hours before the altar 
in prayer and said that he could not do it. Father 
Gutierrez and Father Anthony explained to him, but he 
said he could not understand these things at all. So that 
it was easy to see how great a difference there is between 
speculative and mystical theology and because the good 
father Dominic had been very well trained in the first 
and, as it seemed, little trained in the latter, therefore he 
was in the habit of talking in this way about prayer and 
contemplation.””” 

The diary of Ignatius brings out very prominently 
one feature of his religious experiences which he and 
his followers, adopting a common opinion of the time, 
regarded as a gift of God: “the gift of tears.” That age 
was more tolerant of excessive displays of emotion than 
this and that tolerance was more marked among Latin 
than among northern nations. The facility and frequency 
with which another contemporary of Ignatius, Catherine 
de Médicis, Queen Dowager of France, and the kings, 
queens and princes who were her children, joined in family 
weeping is remarkable. The reason for regarding tears 
as desirable in private devotion is evident. ‘They were 
an assurance to the worshipper that the contrition or ador- 
ation he offered to God in prayer was sincere and deep. 
Ignatius therefore welcomed bursts of tears during prayer. 
He told Camara that when he “did not weep three times 
during mass he thought himself lacking in divine com- 
Panis, 

In this again we see the singular mixture of capacities 
in Ignatius. This intensely emotional nature could control 
his tears absolutely by his will and use his reason about 
them perfectly. At one time he wept so much that the 
doctor told him to stop or lose his eyes. He told Lainez 
“that ordinarily he wept six or seven times a day.””™ 

* Pol. V, 419. 7° Scripta, I, 244, Memoriale. * Scriptagieip.-Len. 


316 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Ignatius always insisted on obedience to the doctor. He 
mastered his tears to such an extent that he could pre- 
vent or permit them at will and ‘‘found as much consola- 
tion as before in prayer and worship.” 

One of the members of the Company was troubled by 
the fact that he had not the “gift of tears.” Ignatius 
ordered a letter to be written to him full of pious com- 
mon sense. “So far as the gift of tears is concerned, it 
is not necessary nor good and convenient for all. Our 
Father Ignatius will pray God to grant it to you so far 
as you need it for your work, which is to help souls, 
your own and your neighbors. What you quote about 
‘the hard heart,’ my dear Father, is true, but the heart 
desirous as yours is to serve God and help your neigh- 
bours cannot be called hard and, since you have in your 
will and the higher parts of your soul, compassion for the 
miseries of your neighbours and want to help them and 
do all in your power to carry out your desire, no other 
tears and no other tenderness of heart are necessary. 
. . . 90 do not be troubled by the lack of external tears, 
but keep on showing your good will in deeds and that is 
enough for your own growth toward perfection, for help- 
ing your neighbours and for the service of God.” 

» Rib. fol. 172—Scripta, I, 249. *% Letts. V, 714. 


CHAPTER XXI 
THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 


The life of Ignatius as we read it in the Confessions 
and the early recorded recollections of his friends, is, in 
comparison with the lives of some of the saints, lacking 
in miracles. It seemed so to his intimate friends. In the 
first Life of Loyola begun thirteen years after his death 
by orders of Francisco Borgia, the General of the Com- 
pany,’ the last chapter is entitled ‘““Concerning the Miracles 
wrought by Him.” It is devoted to answering this ques- 
tion posed by the writer—‘‘Why is not the sanctity of 
Ignatius more attested by miracles, and, like the life 
of many saints, approved by signs and marked by the 
doing of mighty works?” The writer then goes on to show 
that to such virtue as his, illustrated by such service of 
God, miracles are not necessary. There are better proofs 
of holiness than miracles, and he cites the words of Christ: 
“in the last day they shall say: ‘Lord, Lord, have we not 
in Thy name cast out devils and done many mighty works,’ 
and I will profess unto them ‘I never knew ye, depart from 
me, ye that work iniquity.’”” He adds, “I am, however, 
far from thinking that miracles seem to be lacking to 
render illustrious the name of Ignatius,” and he “‘brings 
his narrative to a close” by a short list of things in the 
life of Ignatius ‘‘which could not have happened without 
a miraculous element.” 

The miracles in this list are divisible into three classes. 
First, personal experiences, a long fast in his youth with- 
out marked loss of strength, an eight days’ trance when 


*End of preface. ® Matt. VII, 22. 
317 


318 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


he lay insensible, his visions. Secondly, works of healing, 
Father Simon saved from dangerous illness, Father Jay 
making a journey on foot and suddenly attacked by a great 
pain in the stomach was cured at once by calling on the 
name of Ignatius; after Ignatius’ death Bobadilla was 
freed from a dangerous fever and the Rector of the Col- 
lege of Padua “from the terror of urgent pestilence” 
solely by the memory of Ignatius. Thirdly, prophesyings: 
“He told me just before I became ill for the second time, 
that I would have a third attack, and it happened”; when 
Nadal was sailing in the winter for Spain, Ignatius fore- 
told an easy voyage; he foretold that Lainez would suc- 
ceed him as general of the Company; when Baroelis was 
given up by the doctors he foretold “‘to me” his recovery. 

The solemn and revised testimony of this first biog- 
rapher of Ignatius was given in the process of beatifica- 
tion in 1595 at the age of sixty-eight. When he was asked 
about the miracles in his Life of the friend of his youth, 
he says “‘The miracles were the most certain part of the 
work,” and gives nine, all found in both editions of his 
Latin Life.* Four of these have already been mentioned.* 
a fifth is the healing of the demoniac Matthew. (22) 
Another was the vision with audible words from God 
which fixed Ignatius upon the name of the Company of 
Jesus; another was Ignatius’ calm assurance that a trouble- 
some question about property given to the Company at 
Venice would be settled in their favour, as it shortly was. 
The two others were the sudden assurance given to 
Ignatius, who was at a distance from their sick beds, that 
two beloved members of the Company had died. One 
of these came in a vision of the dead man entering 
heaven.” 

Instances of the certainty of death occurring at a dis- 
tance are often recorded. For example, Henry M. Stan- 


* Scripta, II, 150. *See p.1. "Scripta, II, p. 150, Deposition of Ribadeneira. 


THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 319 


ley writes in his autobiography that, during our Civil War, 
when he was a prisoner in St. Louis, he fell asleep and was 
in a dream transported to Wales and the bedroom of his 
Aunt Mary listening to her parting words. “TI put forth 
my hand and felt the clasp of the long thin hand of the 
sick woman. I heard a murmur of farewell and imme- 
diately I awoke. . . . The next day, the 17th of April, 
1862, my aunt died in Wales.” ° 

The healing of the sick by the prayers of a fellow-be- 
liever would not necessarily constitute a miracle accord- 
ing to the definition and practice of the Church. People 
for whom no one thought of making claim to the honour 
of sainthood supported by miracles, might have what 
was known as the “gift of healing” given of God like 
the “gift of tears.” Polanco tells of Father Michael of 
the Company “who had received from God the gift of 
healing.” “I was suffering with a very troublesome fever 
which ordinarily lasted eighteen hours a day and Michael 
told me that he had wrought healings in Barcelona and 
elsewhere by certain prayers. I asked him what words 
he used and where he fixed his hope of healing. When 
I found that there was nothing but good in his forms 
of prayer and that he put his hope of healing in God, I 
asked him if he would heal me and he readily agreed to 
do so. I was not willing, however, to use his help until 
I had consulted Father Ignatius. But when Ignatius, 
who then had very few people to aid him in his labours, 
said he would be glad to have me seek the help of Michael, 
I sent for him and confessed my hope that God would 
heal me by the gift of healing granted to him. Accord- 
ing to his custom he wrote out sacred words, saying three 
times the Our Father and the Hail Mary before the con- 
secrated wafer, and hung the scroll on which he had 
written around my neck. Immediately I felt a refreshing 
coolness from head to foot and I was freed from the 

°H. M. Stanley, Autobiography, p. 217. 


320 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


raging fever. Nevertheless when the thing was over I 
persuaded Michael that he could use that gift of God 
without those words and the rolling up of a scroll of 
written prayers and hanging it around the neck, but 
simply by blessing and the imposition of hands. And so 
at Tivoli that same year and in Spain he often tried it 
and freed many from serious diseases merely by the lay- 
ing on of hands or benediction.”’ In Spain “his fame was 
so great that the sick came from two or three leagues 
around to get his blessing.’’” 

The point is that there was nothing in this transaction 
or in the driving out of a devil by a priest using the regu- 
lar ritual of exorcism, which Ignatius or his friends re- 
garded as technically miraculous. Healing and exorcism 
might be only special forms of ordinary answers to the 
prayers of faith. Their attitude towards them was not 
essentially different from that taken by many Protestants 
in our own day toward answers to prayers. Here for in- 
stance is an instance from a widely circulated Protestant 
book printed in 1882. “A lady lay apparently at the 
point of death. Physicians who had attended her pro- 
nounced death within a few days inevitable.” ... The 
mother of the lady went to a daily prayer meeting held 
at noon to ask for the prayers of the meeting. There were 
sO many requests for special prayers that hers could not 
be presented and she was promised it should be read the 
next day. “The next day she watched at home. A few 
minutes before noon she saw her daughter sink back as 
if dead, but she did not lose faith. Noon came and 
prayers were offered in the meeting. These prayers the 
Lord graciously answered, for, at a few minutes after 
noon, while prayer was being made, the daughter rallied 
and the mother poured forth thanksgivings to God.”*® 

Among the direct interventions of God in their behalf 
which the members of the Company of Jesus noted with 

™Pol. I, 270; IV, 43. ° Prime. 


THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 321 


satisfaction, but which Ignatius did not relate or refer 
to, were what might be called punitive providences used by 
God to chastise opponents of the Company. For example 
Polanco relates that at Perugia there were ‘four citizens 
who were thought to make no secret of their opposition 
to the Company and they paid most heavy penalties for 
their fault. One died suddenly, a second lost his wife 
and fell into extreme poverty, another lost his eyesight 
by ophthalmia, and the last convicted of a terrible crime 
is said to have been condemned to the galleys.’” 

After the death of Ignatius some of his followers and 
admirers involved him retrospectively in this sort of judg- 
ment which seems to have been forbidden by Christ when 
he said: “Say ye of those upon whom the tower in Siloam 
fell that they were sinners above all others in Jerusalem. 
I tell you nay, for except ye repent ye shall all likewise 
perish.” In his second life of Ignatius Ribadeneira, who 
afterwards wrote a pamphlet about God’s punishments 
upon those who seceded from the Company, related this 
story, ° without telling where it came from. A certain rich 
young man seeing Ignatius miserably dressed and bare- 
foot said, laughing at him, “‘May I be burnt if that fellow 
is not worthy of being burnt.” A few days later, setting 
off some fireworks on the tower of his house, he was con- 
sumed in a conflagration."* In pointing out that Ignatius 
seems to have differed from his followers in this tendency 
to hold a preliminary Day of Judgment on his fellow- 
‘men who opposed him, it is not the intention of the writer 
to suggest that the Jesuits differed from other people in 
their belief in punitive providences. In the savage con- 
troversies over religion of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, it was the commonest thing for people on both 
sides to see the especial wrath of God in every misfor- 
tune which befell their adversaries. 


®e. g. Pol. IV, 153, Compare Pol. V, 281, etc. *Scripta, I, 318, note 15. 
“ Rib. 2nd Life, 643. 


322 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Some forty years after the death of Ignatius the con- 
gregation of the Company voted to seek his canoniza- 
tion.” In 1622 the question came before a consistory 
of cardinals for the Pope’s final decision.* Cardinal del 
Monte summed up the case for the sainthood of Ignatius. 
In the last section of his plea he relates sixteen miracles. 
Ten of these were healings wrought after death by his 
relics or vows to him. The six miracles wrought during 
life include none of the nine Ribadaneira deposed to during 
the process for beatification. (23) They are the re- 
suscitation of a man who had hanged himself “whom all 
thought dead,” a man suddenly healed of an illness of 
many years’ standing, the healing of the scorched hand of 
a cook, the freeing of a man from most grave temptations 
by which the devil had during two years beset him, the 
freeing of the College of Loreto from devils, and the 
supernatural shining of the countenance of Ignatius. 

There is one very plain indication that the advisers 
of the Pope in the final action of the process of canoniza- 
tion did not think that the miracles examined during that 
process had what a writer in the Acta Sanctorum calls 
“the signs which mark those great miracles of the Apostles, © 
also called prodigies.” ** It is noticeable that of the unan- 
imous advisory opinions recorded in favour of the saint- 
hood of Saint Ignatius by twenty-eight cardinals and 
nine other prelates, fifteen mention his miracles as more 
or less influential reasons for their decision and twenty- 
two do not mention them, but give as reasons for their 
judgment the holiness of his character and the great work 
he did for God. To read their speeches is to see that a 
much larger majority would have agreed with the opinion 
of a cardinal that Ignatius was not to be excluded from 
among the miracle workers, but that he believed the great- 
est miracle of all had been Ignatius himself. 


14 Acta Sanct. 614 E. ™ For process of canonization see Hinschius, IV, 252, 
Note 7. 7 Acta Sanct. 622 E. * Acta Sanct. 600, note 943. 


THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 323 


Precisely the opposite tendency is observable in the 
speeches of the same twenty-eight cardinals in the case 
of Francis Xavier, the great missionary who was made 
a saint by the same bull of canonization. In the case of 
Xavier nineteen of the twenty-eight cardinals mention 
his miracles as reasons for their judgment while in voting 
on the case of Ignatius seventeen of them do not mention 
his miracles. 

The case for Xavier was full of “those great miracles 
also called prodigies.”** Three of them accepted by the 
bull of canonization may be cited as examples. 

A. He saved his shipmates on a becalmed vessel from 
the danger of thirst by ordering all casks and other ves- 
sels filled with sea water and turning it into fresh water.” 

B. The bull cites three cases of his raising the dead. 
The first is the following. ‘When he was preaching to 
the infidels in a church on the promontory of Comorin 
he could produce no effect because of the hardness of 
their hearts, so he offered prayer, ordered a tomb to be 
opened in which a man had been buried the day before 
and made the people understand that, by the will of 
God, the dead man would live again in order to prove 
the truth of the Christian faith. Then the winding sheet 
in which the corpse was wrapped being cut open and prayer 
again offered to God, he ordered the dead to live, who, 
immediately and to the stupefaction of all, arose living. 
- Because of this notable miracle all who were present and 
later many others, believed in God.’’** 

C. While he was allaying a tempest at sea by putting 
into the water the crucifix he wore around his neck, the 
force of the hurricane swept it from his hands, but, when 
he had come to land and was continuing his journey along 
the seashore, a crab suddenly emerged from the waves 


* Act. Sanct. 600. ™ Mon. Xav. II, 712, Bull of Canonization. ™ Mon. Xav. 
II, 712, 713, 710. Bull of Canonization. 


324 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


and stopped at his feet, holding up in his claws the lost 
crucifix.” *° 

Miracles established by a regular process of canoniza- 
tion are not rested simply on the authority of the Church 
in matters of faith. A regular legal process is held, wit- 
nesses make affidavits and there is an advocate whose duty 
it is to invalidate this testimony if he fairly can. This 
fact gives history the right to review the official record 
of the testimony which the court has deemed sufficient 
to prove the miracles. 

In regard to the miracles of Xavier two official inves- 
tigations were held in India. The first was begun by order 
of the King of Portugal to his viceroy in 1556, four years 
after the death of Xavier. The commission sat in four 
places and collected the depositions of sixty-five witnesses. 
No one of these mention the three great miracles or 
prodigies (A, B and C) related above; nor does any con- 
temporary document written by those who knew Xavier. 

Seven witnesses say they have heard that (in the place 
where the miracle of raising the dead is placed by the 
bull of canonization) a boy who had fallen into a well and 
been drowned was brought to life by Xavier. One wit- 
ness deposed that being on a ship with Xavier and an 
important functionary of state, the latter asked the mis- 
sionary about this reported resurrection of a boy drowned 
in a well, and that Xavier told him the boy was not dead 
but alive.*? Another deposed that he had been told by 
a teacher in the College of Goa about asking the same 
question of Xavier and getting the same answer. Both 
of these witnesses, however, in spite of the explicit denial 
by Xavier himself of what is to them only a matter of 
hearsay, evidently continue to believe the reports. To 
the “prodigy” of opening a tomb and raising a dead man 
as a proof that his preaching was true, none of these 
sixty-five witnesses makes any allusion. 

” Mon. Xav. II, 713, Bull of Canonization. Mon. Xav. II, 228. 


THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 325 


Not only is there no early evidence for this prodigy 
of opening a tomb and raising the dead but there is, from 
three separate sources, strong presumptive evidence that 
it did not occur. 

In the process is included an affidavit from Joannes a 
Cruce, “one of the chief men of the province,” where the 
bull says this opening of the tomb and resurrection took 
place. He not only does not mention it when asked if 
Xavier had performed any miracles, but responds to the 
question only in these words: “He accomplished great 
miracles in separating those who called themselves Chris- 
tians from their sins and vices so that after having taken 
the name of Christ they should not be thrust down into 
hell.” That this miracle of opening the tomb and raising 
the dead to prove the truth of the Gospel could have taken 
place without Joannes a Cruce hearing of it is impos- 
sible, that knowing of it he would have made such a 
reply to a question whether Xavier had performed any 
miracles, is unbelievable. 

The second presumptive witness against the correctness 
of this assertion that Xavier, in order to prove his preach- 
ing true, opened a tomb and raised a dead man, is Father 
Teixeira of the Company, author of a life of Xavier. 
In this life he puts medical evidence that the body of 
Xavier was in a way not natural, preserved many months 
from corruption, and classifies under five heads the re- 
sults of inquiry into his miracles: 1—The spirit of 
prophecy foretelling future events; 2—During his many 
voyages he found ports for puzzled pilots; 3—A super- 
natural insight into consciences; 4—A great power to drive 
out demons; 5—Visions and revelations.” It is evident 
that Father Teixeira had no antecedent prejudice against 
the idea that God might work miracles through his living 
saints. When, thirty years after Xavier’s death, Ribad- 
eneira published in Spain a Spanish Life of Ignatius in 

™ Mon. Xav. IL 359. Mon. Xav. II. 912. 


326 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


which he told of Xavier’s miracles, it was sent to Teixeira 
with a request for comment and criticism. He wrote a 
letter saying that he had been thirty-three years in India 
and had some knowledge of the matters whereof he wrote. 
The most significant paragraph refers to the raising of 
the dead,—“‘As to what you say about God raising the 
dead by Father Francis, although his merit and sanctity 
was so great that Our Lord could have done it through 
him by His infinite goodness and power, nevertheless, after 
due inquiry, no certainty whatever has been arrived at in 
regard to it; only that it is commonly said that Our Lord 
did it through him. It is true that in regard to that 
matter it is said that God raised a dead man by him on 
Cape Comorin but, when one tries to get at the bot- 
tom of this, no one can be found who has seen it. Father 
Amrrique, who has been more than forty years there, 
tells me that he has made the most solemn inquiry into 
the matter and that he never could find anything which 
could be affirmed with certainty. This is not said because 
there was not virtue and sanctity in that blessed Father, 
but because in a matter of such importance certainty 
seems necessary; or at least evident probability. Because, 
as your Reverence well says in the prologue of your book 
on the life of our Father Ignatius, ‘If every lie in any 
matter is unworthy of a Christian man, much more is it 
unworthy in the lives of the saints.’ God does not need 
the help of our lies.””* 

Father Alexander Valignano who forwarded this letter 
did not mince words in his criticism. He speaks twice of 
something related as a “pure imagination” which never 
really happened. What the book says about miracles he 
calls “‘a very great hyperbole which in my judgment should 
be totally stricken out, because, although it is true that 
a great many things are talked about, there is not to be 
found firmly established, either in India nor in Japan, a 

* Mon. Xav. II, 805. 


THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 327 


single certain miracle outside of what appears in the first 
part of the Historia Indica.”** This is pretty strong and 
certainly unprejudiced testimony from men who had 
known and loved Xavier, that he did not open a tomb and 
call a dead man out of it. 

A second investigation of the miracles of Xavier was 
made by orders of the pope in 1616 and 1617, sixty-five 
years after Xavier’s death. It was held in four places 
and collected the affidavits of 138 witnesses. All three 
of the “great miracles or prodigies” under discussion are 
referred to by some of these witnesses. In regard to the 
resurrection wrought after the opening of a tomb as a 
proof of the truth of Xavier’s preaching, there are two 
hearsay witnesses. One says he knows it from public 
fame (he was born twenty years after Xavier died). The 
other man says he heard it from many old men of the 
neighborhood.” A third witness, a native otherwise 
unknown, says he saw it. This thread of testimony in 
itself slender, would seem to break completely under the 
force of the negative evidence given by Joannes a Cruce 
and Fathers Teixeira and Valignano. To the mind of a 
historian it is impossible to weigh seriously against their 
competent and unprejudiced testimony, these depositions 
made by very inferior witnesses more than sixty years 
after the event. Certainly no one would question this 
conclusion if the events concerned were ordinary and not 
miraculous events. 

- It is noteworthy that as you get away from the earliest 
sources, which deny the resurrections of Xavier,” the num- 
ber of resurrections from the dead attributed to him 
steadily increases. In 1620 John Berckmans writes from 
Rome: ‘“I myself have heard Father Vitelleschi assert 
with all certitude before eighteen cardinals that the blessed 
Francis Xavier had raised twenty-three or twenty-four 


* Scripta, I, 743. Mon. Xav. II, 628. ” Xavier himself, Father Teixeira, 
Father Valignano. 


328 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


irom the dead, and, in the case of seventeen of these, there 
was such clear and irrefutable testimony that no shadow 
of a doubt could rest upon them.”’*’ Later the number 
of his resurrections from the dead, including those by 
his relics, rose to fifty-six.”* 

We come now to the “great miracle or prodigy” of the 
salt water made fresh. In the second process four wit- 
nesses depose they have heard it; two “from witnesses 
worthy of belief,”’ two from men who were,on the ship. 
Two witnesses depose that they were in the ship when 
the miracle took place; one a Chinaman eighty-five years 
old, otherwise unknown, describes it in detail and an- 
other man, an Eurasian ninety-eight years old, otherwise 
unknown, says he also was present and describes it with 
some variation.” 


A hundred and seventy-five years after the death of 
Xavier the Rector of the Jesuit College at Goa wrote to 
Rome that Father Bokoski, going to the island of Sanchoan 
to visit the tomb of St. Francis Xavier, passed through a 
canal sixty Chinese leagues long with both ends open 
to the sea. On it there was a village inhabited by fifty 
gentile families. The inhabitants told him the European 
priest had preached in their village. His throat grew dry 
and he asked for a drink of water, but he was told there 
was nothing but salt water in the canal. He asked for 
that and drank it. “Since that very day the water of 
the canal for twenty leagues to the north of the village 
and twenty leagues to the south of it, has remained fresh, 
although the water for ten leagues from each end where 
the canal goes into the sea remains salt. Father Bokoski 
drank the water and took two jugs with him to Canton, 
where everybody said it was as sweet as spring water. 

*™Mon. Xavier II, p. 806, Note. *™Astrain, I, 490. The learned Jesuit 


historian Sacchini writes of the “opinions of old men whose memory can be 
sensibly changed by so long a lapse of time.” Scripta I, 702. 


THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 329 


This, my Father, is the miracle worthy of being known 
and published.’’*° 

There remains the miracle of the crab and the crucifix. 
There is only one witness to this who says he heard it from 
a certain Emanuel Joannes. He adds that it is public 
and notorious in India. 

When the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal in 1760 
a scholasticus of the Company made affidavit that he took 
from the chapel of their college in Coimbra a crucifix 
of wood and silver. On the back of the silver cross was 
inscribed that this was the crucifix which by “an ex- 
traordinary prodigy” the crab brought back to St. Fran- 
cis Xavier. In Rome, six of his comrades in exile, 
members of the Company, signed with him an affidavit 
that this was the crucifix thus miraculously restored.” 
These two affidavits made on the coast of India in 1616 
and in Rome in 1760 are the only testimony to the miracle 
of the crab and the crucifix. 

There are miracles recorded in the Bible which many 
a modern Protestant believer in inerrant verbal inspira- 
tion could wish, if he frankly expressed his inmost feel- 
ings, were not there, the devils and the swine, the float- 
ing axe head,” death in the pot.** Nevertheless, acting on 
his general principle of the inerrant verbal inspiration of 
the scriptures, he accepts them without question or 
scruple. This ought to enable him to understand by the 
sympathetic imagination, the attitude of his Roman Cath- 
olic brother towards the grotesque prodigy of the crab 
and the crucifix, when it has been accepted in solemn con- 
sistory and confirmed by a papal bull. 

The tendency to the increase of miracles with the 
lapse of time, so very marked in accounts of the life of 
Xavier, is also noticeable, though to a much slighter de- 
gree, in the accounts of the life of Ignatius. In the 


*° Mon. Xav. II, 785. ** Mon. Xav. II, 728. (With a picture of the crucifix.) 
it movi... “Il K. IV 38. 


330 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


earliest sources of his life, the miraculous element 
(aside from visions, which are not necessarily ‘‘miracles”) 
is not prominent. This is so evident that, as we have 
seen, Ribadeneira makes at the end of his two first Lives 
a long explanation of it.**. At the age of eighty-two he 
wrote a third short popular Life and says to introduce it: 
“In the last chapter of my former life I treated briefly 
of miracles as if he had done none, or as if they were 
not necessary to prove his sainthood. I have decided 
now to set forth more fully, not all, but a part of the 
miracles God deigned to work by His servant. For, even 
in 1572, when I wrote his Life in Latin I knew some other 
miracles had been wrought by him. But I had not made 
myself so certain of them by investigation that I could 
persuade myself to publish them. Now they have been 
thoroughly established by proper witnesses in public in- 
vestigations.”* This different attitude of the friend 
of Ignatius at fifty-five and at eighty-two years of age, 
is a partial measure of the growth of the tendency to 
write of the Blessed Ignatius the wonder working saint 
rather than of Father Ignatius, the holy man. Before 
the middle of the seventeenth century that tendency was 
firmly established among the members of the Company. 
No such list of “great miracles or prodigies” as was cited 
of St. Francis Xavier has ever been assigned to St. 
Ignatius. But the century was not very old before more 
than one hundred and fifty attested miracles wrought by 
Ignatius or by his name, his picture or his relics were 
being cited. Most of them were miracles of healing and 
driving out of devils, though there were some of fires 
stopped, or men saved from storm at sea. There was one 
of a village saved from a pack of ravening wolves which 
descended on it from the hills. 

This, of course, is not, in comparison with similar lists, 


He expressly says he does not imply that Ignatius wrought no miracles. 
* Chap. XVIII cited Act. Sanct. 600 N. 944. 


THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 331 


an extremely large catalogue of miracles. In 1387 Prince 
Peter of Luxemburg died. He had been created Bishop of 
Metz at fourteen years of age and a cardinal at sixteen, 
and he died before he was eighteen with the reputation 
of a saint. Two years later the celebrated Pierre d’Ailli 
advocated before the Pope the canonization of the young 
cardinal. He cited 2128 miracles, which lacks only 62 of 
making one every day for six years. Among them were 
73 resurrections from the dead.*° 

For many of the miracles of Loyola the case from an 
examination of testimony on a purely historical basis is 
very much better than the exceedingly weak case made 
out in the printed documents for the “great miracles 
sometimes called prodigies” of Xavier. On the other 
hand for some of these miracles of Loyola cited in the 
seventeenth century the case is extremely weak. 

An example of a weak case is the assertion that the 
Virgin Mary dictated the Spiritual Exercises to Ignatius. 
The first traceable origin of this is in a revelation to the 
Venerable Marina d’Escobar printed in 1615 in a life 
by Luis de la Puenta. It was spread by a picture painted 
two years later by the order of the general of the Com- 
pany, copies of which were found before long in almost 
all Jesuit houses. Father Astrain*’ shows that it is en- 
tirely unsupported by serious evidence.** 

Some of these stories of later tradition suggest to the 
reader the hope, to say the least, that they came from 
pure legend. How possible it is that some of them might 
have been creations of legend is shown by the following 
opinion of one who knows the period well. 

“Legend, whose testimony is always so insecure, was 
then (the 16th century) in Spain the most lying testi- 
mony ever seen in the world. . . . Under the shield of 
local tradition our histories, and above all our lives of 


°° Tschackert, 79. 161 n. ™Father Venturi dismisses it as unworthy of 
critical consideration. 


332 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


saints, have been filled with the most improbable fables. 
. . . That century was the century of false seals, false 
chronicles, false prophecies, false visions . . . in short, 
the source of a deluge of devout falsehoods which de- 
fend themselves with the shield of local tradition.”* 

Here is a specimen of what these local traditions did 
to the memory of Ignatius. ‘One day in Manresa when 
the pilgrim (Ignatius) was following the rocky road which 
is called Sobreroca, doubtless coming back from the 
church del Carmen, he heard the sharp cries of a little 
girl bending over an old well, which is still to be seen. 
A hen escaping from her care had just drowned itself and 
a crowd of curious onlookers was laughing at the lamen- 
tations of the poor little girl looking forward to paternal 
punishment. The heart of Ignatius was touched. He 
kneeled down and said a devout prayer: immediately the 
water of the well rising to the margin brought back the 
resuscitated hen which the saint, with a smile, gave back, 
with his own hands, to the little girl.” An inscription in 
an oratory near the well records ‘Here Ignatius Loyola 
wrought in 1522 his first miracle: the resurrection of a 
drowned hen.’’*° 

The sickly sentimentality of the idea of Ignatius using 
the God given power to break the awful bounds of life 
and death for the resurrection of a hen in order to stop 
the facile tears of a little girl afraid of being punished 
by her father, is surely more fitted for what was classified 
in the writer’s youth as books for Sunday school libraries 
infant class section, than for the inspiring biography of 
a mighty warrior of God such as Ignatius was. 

The following grotesque tale, recorded by an official 
biographer of Ignatius in the middle of the eighteenth 
century, was dated about 1615. The Lenten sermons at a 
town in Burgundy were being preached by a member of 


® Astrain, I, 159. “Clair Rib. 50. 


THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE LIFE OF IGNATIUS 333 


a certain religious order. He was invited to dinner by 
Dr. Gillabodus, a man noted for his character and knowl- 
edge. “At table the guest was annoyed by hearing the 
holiness and merits of Ignatius exalted by his host and 
the unhappy man dared to say ‘The miraculous power of 
the founder of the Jesuits reached its height in curing 
the toothache. He could not do more than that.’ Such 
a remark made in profane envy by a man of such a re- 
spected profession and robe, gravely offended those at 
table with him and was received in melancholy silence. 
The thing happened near the middle of Lent and, that he 
might finish the series of sermons he had begun, God, for 
the sake of the people, deferred the punishment of the 
crime. But the day after Easter he was again invited 
by the same host and paid the penalty of his impious 
temerity, for when he held the cup in his hands to drink, 
suddenly he shuddered and cried aloud that his teeth 
were burst asunder and his mouth closing up. Then his 
jaws became fixed and he uttered no word, but terrified 
those looking on by a bellowing and dull roaring like a 
man in despair. After this he was rent and wrenched, 
raged and was shaken by such a powerful fury that five 
or six men could hardly hold him. Doctors were called, 
but in vain, for the disease, brought on by God, could not 
be driven out by man. Amid such agonies he lingered 
three days. He spoke eloquently to the people, warning 
them by his punishment to show due reverence to the 
blessed saints and thus made an end of living without 
giving by a single other word any sign of penitence or 
a good mind.”** 

In this horribly grotesque tale the punitive miracle 
seems to reach its climax and the reader exclaims with 
Virgil “Can such wrath dwell in celestial minds!” 


“The chronicler hints by this last statement that he went to hell. Acta 
Sanctorum, 817. 


334 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


It is probably true that the image of no great religious 
leader in history has been more distorted by his enemies 
than the image of Ignatius. But it is also true that few 
have had more need of the prayer: “Save me from my 
friends.” 


CHAPTER XXII 
THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 


The life of Ignatius after his comrades assembled at 
Rome to found the Company was marked by no outward 
events. During eighteen years he left Rome or its 
suburbs only once, on a rapid mission to Naples and 
towards the end of his life he left the house or garden 
of the Company only on rare errands. Two things ab- 
sorbed him; the relation of his soul to God and his work 
for his fellow men. His days bound together by an un- 
broken continuity of intercourse with God flowed along 
under the stars he loved in a majestic current, guided by 
his will to spend his strength in saving souls, until it 
passed quietly into the boundless sea of eternity. The 
pleasures and sorrows of ordinary men were not only 
absent from his life; long before his death they ceased 
to exist for him. It required no effort to abstain from 
them; he neither felt them nor thought about them. His 
will finally so far dominated all his natural reactions to 
the world around us that it made him far more than able 
to give up the pleasures of life. He became entirely in- 
different to them. The desire for sleep, the appetite for 
food, bodily health or pain, ambition, the sense of beauty, 
his love of music, family affection, these were elements 
to be considered by the use of reason directing the train- 
ing of habit, only in relation to the single purpose of 
glorifying God and saving the souls of his neighbours. 
This is what underlies his doctrine of indifference as set 
forth in the chapter on obedience: to bring the members 
of the Company through the road he had travelled in his 

335 


336 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


own experience to the place where they wanted nothing 
whatever but to know the will of God; where they dis- 
liked nothing except what prevented them from doing 
the will of God. This is the origin and explanation of 
a trait in his final attitude which seems oriental and there 
is no need trying to trace, as has been attempted, direct 
oriental influence in his thinking and writing. (24) 

No follower of Christ (leaving out those who became 
absorbed in saving their own souls and gave up trying 
to help their neighbours) ever led a life more completely 
one—more absolutely dominated by a single purpose; a 
purpose fed in its turn solely by the inner springs of re- 
ligious experience. ‘To analyse the character of Ignatius, 
who was to such an extraordinary degree an individual 
(in the sense of an indivisible entity) is to risk turn- 
ing a great personality into a bundle of qualities, but the 
writer sees no other way of throwing light on the char- 
acter of a man who led during the years of his full ma- 
turity so eventless a life. 

The strength of his will finally destroyed all traits of 
his soul which were, or might become obstacles to its pur- 
pose and brought him to regard with calm confidence 
all external obstacles, however serious they might seem 
to other men. The chief source of this strength of will 
was his certain conviction that God had begun soon after 
his conversion to teach him as a boy is taught in school, 
had given him direct revelations of the mysteries of the 
faith, had led him to abandon his original plan of leading 
his comrades to Jerusalem, had revealed to him in a vision 
the name of the Company, had guided him in the details 
of writing the Constitutions and was now so close that 
he could “‘find Him” whenever needful. 

This divine guidance did not seem to him anything 
peculiar to himself. On the contrary he said that anyone 
who abandoned his will to God might find a large measure 
of it. If he had ever heard of the idea which began to 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 337 


circulate more than two generations after his death that 
the Virgin Mary had dictated to him the Spiritual Exer- 
cises, he would have rejected it. What he did say was 
that God had taught him through his own experience 
how to write it. He thought God had helped him to decide 
rightly doubtful details of the Constitutions by the use 
of his reason, in hours when his soul had been freed by 
direct intercourse with God from all personal choice. 
When his friends wrote that the Spiritual Exercises were 
a gift of God, a teaching received from God—done by 
the great help of God—by the unction of the Holy Spirit, 
etc., they probably meant no more than Luther’s pupil 
Mathesius meant when he wrote “This is one of the 
greatest miracles which our Lord has caused to be per- 
formed by Dr. Martin Luther that he gives us Germans 
a very beautiful version of the Bible in good intelligible 
German words.” They would, like the modern Jesuit 
editor of the Spiritual Exercises, have rejected the sug- 
gestion that they wished to put the writings of Ignatius 
on the same plane of inspired authority with the 
scriptures.’ Confident as he was in God’s guidance, his 
confidence was of a sort which made him humbly and 
devoutly obedient to the Church and her supreme ruler. 
To one who knows him the suspicion of his early critics 
that he might be one of the alumbrados who felt that the 
voice of God in their soul set them above all other au- 
thority, is ridiculous. He refused all suggestions of union 
_ with other orders and thought the company most efficient 
when it worked apart from them, simply because it had 
its own work to do in its own way.” 

Once when Lainez, in reply to a question from him 
about God’s relation to the founders of other orders, 
said he believed the fundamental points of all their in- 
stitutions were revealed to them of God and less important 
details left to their decision, Ignatius said “I think en- 

* Mon. Ig. Series II, vol. 1, p. 38. * Scripta, I, 439. 


338 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


tirely as you do.” * For his firm faith that God had guided 
and would always help him, never led Ignatius consciously 
or unconsciously to look on himself as a favorite of the 
Divine Ruler of the Universe. 

That severe discipline which he held over himself until it 
became second nature and required no effort to maintain, 
was also applied to his subordinates. We have seen that 
the programme imposed on his colleges was less severe, 
and the treatment in other respects milder, than that 
which prevailed in a leading college of the University of 
Paris for years after his death. So it must be remem- 
bered that the severe discipline imposed on a Jesuit 
house by Loyola was, in at least two respects, less severe 
than that of many other monasteries which lived strictly 
by their rule: there were no ascetic practices, scourgings, 
extra fastings, etc., imposed, nor was there any rising 
for common nocturnal prayer. The bell that rang in a 
Jesuit house after seven hours’ sleep was the first to break 
the silence of the night.‘ 

But Ignatius’ ideal was that of a strictly policed bar- 
racks with all free time suspended; for the warfare in 
which they fought was continuous. No one might leave 
the house or receive or send letters without the permis- 
sion of his superior.” Every month everybody wrote all 
faults he had noted in any others to the head of the house.*® 
If he noted any serious faults in the head of the house 
he told them to Ignatius, who never revealed the name of 
his informant. ‘There was not much time for recrea- 
tion in the house or college of Rome under the immediate 
supervision of Ignatius. But he believed in the recreation 
which ought to be given to the body. “If those at Mo- 
dena,” he writes, ‘had taken into account some proper 
bodily exercise, perhaps so many good young men would 


* Rib. 530, second Life. ‘Scripta I, 483. 5 Letts. XII, 619. 
Resa I, 484. This was also done at the College of Montaigu at Paris. 
odet. 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 339 


not have died.”* He seems, however, to have thought 
that walking in the garden of some friend of the Company 
once a week or “‘oftener if it can be done without missing 
graver occupations” was proper bodily exercise.® 

At Rome there was a suburban vineyard belonging to 
the Company, where the scholars went twice a week for 
recreation.’ At first in addition to “strolling and pleasant 
talk” he seems to have allowed two games, “the lusus 
trudiculorum in which, either on a table or on the ground, 
globes are driven by a mallet through an iron circle,” *° 
or “the game of round flat pieces of wood which are driven 
in long courses upon tables under certain regulations.” 
This last was undoubtedly the ancestor of squails. Ignatius 
had seen it played in Paris and there was evidently an 
out of door form of it. He called it piastrelle and, outside 
of singing and strolling about, it came to be the only 
pastime permitted in the vineyard." Not long before his 
death he sent word to a college where they were playing 
at ball and at marbles, that he preferred to have nothing 
played in any college except piastrelle in the open air 
“which gave exercise to the arms and to almost the whole 
body.”?* Voluntary or impromptu sports were not wel- 
comed; for Ignatius had no confidence in any life for the 
Company which did not go by rule. Once young “Ribad- 
eneira, Father Olave and others, got to throwing around 
an orange and the man who muffed it must recite the 
Angelic Salutation.” Ignatius heard of it and gave them 
a penance that others should not follow their example and 
bring in some new game.”* 

The minute discipline extended even to table manners.” 
This, together with his extreme care for cleanliness came 
in the last analysis from the fact that Ignatius was a 


Basque noble who had lived up to thirty among Spaniards 
7 Letts. IX, 121. ®Letts. VI, 312. °Pol. IV, 13. *Is this an ancestor of 


croquet? ™Scripta, I, 240, 502. Letts. IX, 43, 120, VIII, 31. ™ Scripta, I, 
WOge 1. 487. 


340 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


of high social rank. How necessary such training was is 
shown by the elementary character of some of the rules. 
They seem to have been imposed only by the force of 
public opinion, which held that certain things were 
“indecorous” or “rustic”; for example, it was thought 
“boorish” to eat with the mouth always open or to make 
a noise when drinking. But it may be assumed that 
Ignatius’ shrewd common sense was at the bottom of this 
also. For no detail was too minute for his attention if it 
armed his Company better in the fight with sin. After 
his death when Jesuits began to play very influential parts 
in worldly society as tutors or confessors to young princes 
and nobles, it was no small advantage to the cause that, 
when dining in noble houses, they did not shock the tastes 
of their hosts. If some of the more ascetic orders char- 
acterized his care for such things as trivial or even as 
wicked worldliness, he replied that nothing was trivial 
or worldly which helped in teaching religion to men. He 
learned this practical lesson quite early in his service 
of God, when he returned to his old neatness about the 
care of his nails and hair at the time he found pupils 
in some families of social position at Manresa.” 
_ So severe and minute a discipline as that of Loyola 
might be expected to produce occasionally hysterical out- 
breaks which probably astonished those concerned in 
them. An example of one of these has been preserved. 
A short time before the death of Ignatius, four lay 
coadjutors got into a lark in the kitchen and threw water 
over each other. Ignatius imposed this penance: once 
every week for some time they were to eat at a table apart; 
Matteo in the same kitchen vessel from which he had 
thrown the water. “When the dinner is half over dirty 
water shall be thrown in his face and clean water in the 
faces of the others because the water they threw was not 
dirty. After dinner each must kiss the feet of the others. 


% Astrain, 36 cited. Confessions, 48, 54. 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 341 


Every Sunday they must eat in the stable with the mules, 
with the water thrown in their faces again.”” The two 
ringleaders were given a very severe admonition by Father 
Ignatius who told them they could “have his permission 
if they wished to leave the Company, just because of that 
foolish conduct, for he did not know what he could hope 
to make out of two persons ten and twelve years in it 
who could act so little to edification.’ 

Such cases, however, seem to have been rare, and the 
days in the model establishment of the Company which 
Ignatius formed at Rome, must have flowed on usually in 
a calm monotony of prayer and effort to grow better and 
do more in the service of man. 

It is a great mistake to suppose, as some have, that 
Ignatius with all his virtues was an unlovable and un- 
loved man. There is abundant testimony that, though 
stern, he was not harsh. Affection mingled with the rev- 
erence in which he was held. The whole Company felt 
as soldiers sometimes feel toward a just officer whose 
severity is plainly for the good of the service and whose 
discipline does not conceal his care of them and his sym- 
pathy for them. No one suspected Ignatius of personal 
ambition. Even if he had not twice tried to resign as 
general, no one would ever have questioned his entire 
devotion to the Company for which he was working him- 
self to the verge of exhaustion. The simple sincerity of 
the man is his most outstanding trait and the end showed 
it strong in death. 

This sincerity which led him to trample under foot 
every natural taste in the service of what he believed, is 
sO apparent to anyone who studies his life, that it is 
difficult to understand how the opposite opinion could 
have found credence, even among those who disbelieve 
strongly in the truth, the institution, the ideal to which 
he was devoted. It may be fanciful, but the writer sus- 

Peocriota, f, 577. 


342 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


pects that a large share in producing this particular mis- 
understanding may be attributed to Jesuit art of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In some of the 
series of engravings illustrating the life of Ignatius made 
then and widely circulated, he is misrepresented with a 
sickly sweetness of smile, an exaggerated elegance of at- 
titudinizing gesture in accord with the taste of the age 
when they were made, but utterly out of accord with the 
character and life of him they try to portray. The pious 
intentions of these artists do not change the fact that they 
have produced caricatures. They show us an overcare- 
fully posed figure in sacred tableaux vivants and not the 
man Ignatius was. This attempt of the art of the eight- 
eenth century to make the early heroes of the Jesuits 
figures of elegance is very evident also in literature. A 
modern writer thus admirably characterizes it.” ‘Father 
Poussines, in an age (1666) when the simplicity and neg- 
ligence of the style of the letters of the saint (Xavier) 
would not have been found sufficiently pleasing, thought 
himself obliged, for the honour of the saint and the wel- 
fare of souls, to translate him into Latin which was elegant. 
God reward his holy intentions in heaven, but it is plain 
that the honour of the saint and the welfare of souls de- 
mand today very different procedure.”** Elsewhere he 
protests against the evident effort to turn the hasty letters 
of a hard-working missionary into the style of an address 
before the French Academy. 

The tenderness of Ignatius to the sick and his unre- 
mitting care for the health of all his subordinates, made 
evident to them that the severity of his discipline was quite 
compatible with deep affection for them. This affectionate 
care appears from the very beginning of his life at Rome 
when there was very little money. The steward was re- 
quired to report to him twice a day what the brother in 
charge of the infirmary needed for his patients and the 

™ Father Cros, I, XLVI. * Cros. XVLI. 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 343 


money for that was the first thing taken out of the alms 
on which the house lived. If money was wanting, lots 
were drawn to see which of three blankets, those of 
Ignatius, of the financial agent, and of the steward, should 
be pawned or sold.”® Years later the doctor induced him 
to rest and he was always very scrupulous about obeying 
the doctor’s orders, and seeing that everybody else did. So 
he handed over his duties in the house to Nadal, but he still 
kept for himself the oversight of the care of the sick.?° 
This oversight was a real oversight and not merely listen- 
ing to reports. When young Ribadeneira had been bled 
Ignatius sent some one three times during the night to 
see that the bandages had not slipped or were not too 
tight.** Whenever there was serious illness he was apt to 
drop into the sickroom at night. Once when medicine 
was to be taken at midnight, Ignatius coming in found 
no one by the bed and learned from the sick man that 
no medicine had been given. He ordered the careless 
nurse to leave the house at once. The probationer went 
out the doors but lingered in the vestibule because he 
had not been ordered to leave that. When the righteous 
wrath of Ignatius cooled, he forgave the offender who 
became Rector of the Roman College.*? When Father 
Otelo was in danger of breaking down from nervous over- 
strain, Ignatius had him sleep in the same room with him 
and eat at his table, forbade him to offer prayers or to 
study, took him out into the country and in three weeks 
restored him to usefulness.” 

It is exceedingly common for Ignatius in his letters to 
advise the man to whom he is writing to look after his 
health, or to ask him to watch over the health of some 
one else. To one brother, who wished to abstain from 
wine as a mortification to the flesh, he repeated the advice 
of Paul to Timothy, replacing the “little” of the Apostle’s 


* Scripta, I, 363. ™Scripta, 170, Memoriale. ™ Rib. Life, folio 192. 
Scripta, I, 167, Mem. * Scripta, I, 452. 


344 - IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


£2244 


letter to Timothy by the phrase “properly diluting it. 
He kept a sharp eye on the novices, and, when he noticed 
that any one of them looked weak or pale, he ordered 
him to sleep longer and omit some of the tasks of his fel- 
lows.” One of his novices remembered long after. how 
Ignatius had come to see him when he was unwell and 
consoled him like a loving father. Once he brought a lit- 
tle box of sweets, saying, “Here, Oliver, is something sent 
me by the wife of the Viceroy of Sicily. Eat it,” 
and then with a smile, “It is by the doctor’s orders.” *° 


His care of the sick was so evident, so continuous, so man- 


ifestly the outcome of tender sympathy, in a man stern 
to himself and stern to others, that it must have become 
known through the entire company until all its members 
came to believe “no mother has such care for her sons as 
our blessed Father has for his sons—especially the weak 
and sick.” This was a right conclusion, for Ignatius said 
many times to one of his intimates that “it was an ad- 
mirable providence of God which had sent him so much 
illness in order that he might learn to feel the anguish 
of others.”*” 

His especial concern for novices young in years or 
young in the Christian life as it was set before the as- 
pirants for the Company, was very noticeable. For the 
discipline of Ignatius was no iron-clad system, applied 
without discrimination to all. He tempered the wind to 
the shorn lamb,” and he expected his subordinates to do 


the same. For example, when a wall to the garden was 


being built, Ignatius sent word to the minister of the 
house that all inmates were to work on it for a certain 
time every day, carrying stones, moving dirt, etc. Among 
the novices was a certain young noble who was terribly 
mortified by this, because the wall was along the street 
and he could be seen working by his acquaintances. One 


“Pol. III, 175. ™Scripta, I, 258, Memoriale. * Scripta, 508. ™ Scripta, I, 
368. * Scripta, I, 416, 420. Rib. Dicta et Facta. 


one sea 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 345 


day when Ignatius was watching the work, he saw by 
the face and manner of the young noble that he was very 
much tempted by the situation. ‘So our Father said 
quietly to the minister, ‘Don’t you see that young man 
is very much tempted? Why did you order him to do 
this work?’ The minister answered, ‘Because your orders 
were to call everybody to it without exception.’ Then our 
Father said, ‘Because I give such an order do you 
think that you, being minister of the house, are forbidden 
to use discretion?’ And he called the novice and ordered 
him not to work because it was not a duty for him.” 
When we remember the terrible humiliations to his 
pride as a noble Ignatius had inflicted on himself in the 
early days after his conversion, we see in this and similar 
incidents that experience had taught him not to destroy 
intelligence and sympathy and depend mechanically upon 
iron-clad discipline to train the souls of men. There was 
only one thing which he would never tolerate either in 
young or old, and that was persistent disobedience which 
struck at the very root of his ideal for the Company. 
He was able thus to fit the rule to the man by his 
great knowledge of human nature about which his inti- 
mates are unanimous. They even said that Father 
Ignatius had to talk only once with a man to know him 
“from head to foot.”*° He was not of course infallible 
in his judgments of men: witness his mistakes in appoint- 
ments noted on pages 233 and 261. Certainly he spared 
‘no pains to win the confidence and love of his young men 
that he might help their souls. A novice wished to with- 
draw from the house and would not say why. Ignatius 
suspected the reason was an unnecessary scruple over 
something in the past life of the youth, so he told the 
young man of the evil things he, Ignatius, had done before 
his own conversion. Thus encouraged the young man 
told why he thought himself unworthy to enter the com- 
* Scripta, I, Rib. 410. * Scriptay"ky) 250. 


346 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


pany and Ignatius showed him it was ‘“‘a very small thing 
before the mercy of God.”** | 

This tact in handling novices and his patient kindness 
toward them show most plainly in the case of Nadal. 
Ignatius had tried to win him at Paris and failed. When 
some years later he applied at Rome for admission to 
the Company, Ignatius said “with this man we shall have 
trouble, because he is strongly inclined to melancholy as 
you can see by looking at his eyes. It is to be feared that, 
if God does not call him to the Company he may sink 
into melancholy and lose his mind entirely.” We can 
trace from Nadal’s diary the handling of this ticklish situa- 
tion. “I was afflicted by melancholy and weak health: 
. . . Ignatius showed me the greatest kindness, often in- 
viting me to eat at table with him. He came frequently 
to my room and often took me for a walk in the vineyard. 
. . . Fearing my melancholy he ordered a room to be 
found for me looking out on a pleasant garden.” Ignatius 
ordered him to dig in the garden. In consequence Nadal 
began to have a good appetite. Fearing this was sinful 
he consulted Ignatius. “The Father asked ‘Why do you 
want to eat?’ I answered ‘To live in order to do penance 
for my sins and to serve God.’ ‘Well,’ he said placidly, 
smiling a little, ‘All right. Eat, then,’ and when I heard 
this every scruple was taken away. 

“He told me not to fast and when I hesitated—saying 
others would be scandalized—he said if anyone was scan- 
dalized he would put him out. He even arranged for the 
Pope’s Vicar to order me not to fast in Lent. He never 
would give me a penance and when I asked for one he 
said, ‘Your penance is to free your mind from care.’”* 
Nadal’s health was established and he became a very effi- 
cient member of the Company. 

A few open sinners were sent away without mercy, 
but among the many he dismissed from the novitiate or 

“Scripta, I, 193, Memoriale. “4 Nadal, Chronicon M. H. S. J. 16-23. 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 347 


the lower ranks of the company because he decided they 
were not fitted for its service, those were rare who did not 
leave at peace with him and friendly to the institution. 
Among the training exercises was a pilgrimage and 
Ignatius’ favourite method of dismissal was to order the 
man on pilgrimage with the quiet understanding that he 
was not to come back. He several times wrote that men 
were to be dismissed in such a way as to spare them any 
feeling of public disgrace. 

To help him gain and keep the affection of his novices 
Ignatius used continuously one device of which many 
readers will probably disapprove; which is just the reason 
why it should be frankly told; though it does not seem 
to the writer very important. He seldom gave directly 
orders which a postulant for the Company might dislike, 
but always through a subordinate, who never revealed that 
the disagreeable orders came from Ignatius. On the con- 
trary all orders which were pleasing to the men, Ignatius 
gave himself.** For instance, a certain Dr. Loarte, a 
Spaniard of noble family, a learned theologian and a dis- 
tinguished preacher much given to prayer, came to Rome 
to join the Company. Ignatius believed that men of high 
position, great learning and marked ability, should be most 
strictly disciplined because, when well trained, they could 
be so extremely useful. He therefore ordered the min- 
ister of the house to give Loarte a very severe course of 
training in humiliation and self-mortification. He carried 
out so well these orders that the learned Doctor often 
“cried like a child,” and then Ignatius was wont to treat 
him kindly and console him. The much tried Doctor 
had no idea that his severe discipline came from Ignatius 
and when he was asked by the minister himself what he 
thought of the two replied, “Father Ignatius is a foun- 
tain of oil and your Reverence a fountain of vinegar.”** 

Ignatius was so much master of his conduct and even 

8 Scripta, I, 196, Memoriale. Scripta, I, 299, Mem. ib. 482. 


348 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


of his feelings that it is hard to be sure that he had among 
his disciples those whom he especially loved; because he 
undoubtedly felt it his duty to love all members of the 
Company. There are indications, however, besides the 
letter already quoted, that his heart went out in especial 
tenderness across the sea to Xavier. It has already 
been pointed out that the early fathers of the Company 
were afraid of family affection as a possible obstacle to 
that more perfect life to which they felt themselves called 
and that they cited the sayings of Christ in support of 
this fear. They were also evidently afraid, in spite of their 
affectionate language each toward the other, of a too 
specialized personal affection for any brother; which might 
perhaps step between them and that love for all the Com- 
pany which was the perfected ideal. This may possibly 
throw some light on a feature of the conduct of Ignatius 
during the last years of his life for which his puzzled inti- 
mates conjectured another explanation. He often praised 
his subordinates when they did well and unless it was 
needful to reprehend them, always treated them with 
consideration. To this rule there were three marked ex- 
ceptions, and they were the men who stood closest to him 
in his daily work,—Nadal, the minister of the house, whom 
he treated so harshly sometimes as to bring tears to his 
eyes, Polanco, the secretary, who “for nine years was his 
hands and feet,” and to whom he “scarcely said a good 
word,” Lainez, whom he had picked for his successor, 
but who got the same treatment. Once when he was dis- 
cussing something of importance with Lainez and the 
latter insisted a little too much on his opinion, Ignatius 
broke in, “All right, take the Company and govern it 
yourself,” in such a tone that Lainez did not say an- 
other word.** Lainez told Ribadeneira that during the 
last year of the life of Ignatius he was sometimes so dis- 
tressed by the harsh treatment of our Father that he used 
“Scripta, I, 202, Mem. 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 349 


to pray to God to let him know what he had done against 
the Company “that this saint treats me in this way.”* 
At his orders Polanco wrote once a very harsh letter 
to Lainez and poor Polanco begs Lainez to remember that 
he is only the pen of Father Ignatius. The letter recites 
certain things Lainez has done which Ignatius considers 
contrary to obedience of the judgment.*’ But it was not his 
policy to repress in fact the expression of their judgment 
by trusted subordinates and the things he recites hardly 
seem to merit this stinging rebuke. Father Ignatius “has 
ordered me to write to tell your Reverence to attend to his 
office, because if he fills that as he ought he will do no 
small task, and not to tire himself by expressing his opinion 
about what concerns the General, because he does not 
need advice from your Reverence except when he asks 
it and less now than before your Reverence took his pres- 
ent office; because in the administration of it your Rever- 
ence has not gained with him much credit in matters of 
government.”** He came to treat all the first fathers in 
this peremptory fashion.*® But they loved him none the 
less and after his death concluded that he thought this 
harshness good for their character: milk for babes but 
strong meat for men.*® It seems that Ignatius hardly 
would have made such a mistake in a matter of human 
nature. Doubtless there was in it an element of the ragged 
nerves of a man nearly worn out by long years of intense 
emotion and incessant overwork who felt instinctively he 
could let himself go a little with those who knew him in- 
timately. But perhaps there was more than this. We 
have seen in the case of the weak brother Simon Rodriguez 
(page 236) that deep down in his heart there was (half 
hidden perhaps from himself) a soft spot for his old 
comrades. This harshness of his later years towards 


* Scripta, I, 455, De Ratione Gubernandi. *See page 227. ™ Letts. IV, 498. 
Scripta, I, 202—Mem. 455. “Scripta, I, 203, 455. 


350 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


men in whom he had perfect confidence may have been 
self defense against a heart that feared its own tender- 
ness because his will was bent to keep faithful, even in 
the affections, to a superhuman ideal that would not give 
up to his old comrades what God wished given to all the 
Company. 

So he was, toward the end of his life, harsh in words 
toward his old friends. But, though he was not graceful 
in his use of language, his sincerity sometimes found beau- 
tiful healing phrases, as when his nephew, Father Araoz, 
was hurt by something in a former letter and Ignatius 
wrote: “I say only this—if I doubted your fidelity I know 
no man in whom I could trust—of this no more.” * 

It is the fashion nowadays to ask about every man, 
Had he a sense of humour? and to rank him low in the 
scale when the answer is No. A sense of humour is a 
pleasant thing and we ordinary men become even more 
uninteresting when we lack it. But many great men 
have not possessed it. A volume entitled the Wit of the 
Apostle Paul would be without leaves and no one has 
yet attempted to collect the humorous sayings of Augus- 
tine. So, in spite of the prevailing fashion, it would not 
be an absolute condemnation of him if Ignatius Loyola 
had been without a sense of humour. But as a matter of 
fact, we may judge that he had a sense of humour from the 
traces of it which have survived in spite of the attitude 
of the men from whom we have our knowledge of him. 

Long before his death Ignatius was regarded not only 
with love but with reverence. His disciples thought of 
him while still alive in the character given by the Church 
after his death, a saint—an intercessor with God for 
human sins—a mediator of divine grace and power to men, 
whose relics would be able to work miracles for those who 
had faith. For instance, when Ignatius had an aching 
tooth pulled, Nadal secretly tried to 0 TER the tooth, but 

“ Letts. VII, 273. 


Fe ey ee eee ee ie 


att ey 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 351 


Ignatius, noticing this, ordered him to throw it away, 
“which he did so seriously that he was never able to find 
it again no matter how hard he looked for it.”*® What 
would have happened to the tooth may be inferred from 
the following paragraph from a “Chronicle of the Com- 
pany on the Lower Rhine,” at the end of the year 1553, 
shortly before the death of Ignatius. “Among these 
troubles Father Kessel and his associates were comforted 
in the course of that same year by a robe brought from 
Rome which Ignatius, wearing it, had blessed by long con- 
tact. Bernard Oliver, coming from Italy in the month of 
November, rendered the college happy by this great gift, 
and the joy which this present gave can not be told in 
words. Everybody wished to venerate this relic of Igna- 
tius with a pious kiss and take it in his hands to examine 
it carefully. In order to satisfy the wishes of the brethren 
Father Kessel permitted that there should fall to the lot 
of each one a fragment of a small piece of cloth torn from 
one of the sleeves. . . . The robe is now kept in the altar 
of the blessed Father, wrapped in red silk and enclosed in 
a silver box, the gift of a noble lady.” * 

Companions who took such an attitude might easily 
come to feel that humour was out of place in the talk 
of a man whose relics they were already beginning to 
treat with veneration. They were apt not to see it, to 
forget it is as unimportant or even perhaps to delete it 
from the record as unedifying. Of course such an atti- 
tude was not required by anything in the teaching of 
the Church. Sir Thomas More, who died as a martyr 
the year Ignatius finished his studies at Paris, was famed 
for a humour which did not desert him even as he was 
laying his head on the block, and St. Philip Neri, canon- 
ized by the same papal bull which definitely placed his 
friend Ignatius among the saints, was noted for his wit. 


“Nadal, Acta Quaedam, Scripta, I, 472. “ Reiffenberg, Bk. II, XXXIII, 
p. 45. ; 


352 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


But after all such an attitude was natural enough to men 
who thought themselves always at death grips with the 
devil for their own souls and the souls of their neighbours. 
We know at least one instance to confirm this probable 
conjecture. 

Not long after his election as general, Ignatius wrote 
to a friend of the Company in Spain ““M. Doime, say to 
my brother, the Friar Barbaran, that, as he says all of 
ours in Spain from Perpignan to Seville ought to be burnt, 
I say and desire that he and all his friends and acquaint- 
ances, not only those between Perpignan and Seville but 
throughout the whole world, should be set on fire of the 
Holy Ghost. So that all of them, arriving at great per- 
fection, may be much marked in the glory of His Divine 
Majesty. Also say to him that our affairs are now being 
discussed before the Governor of Rome and the Vicar 
of His Holiness who are about to give sentence in the case 
and if he has anything against ours, that I invite him 
to make deposition and prove it before those judges, be- 
cause I should be more content if I owe anything to the 
law to pay it myself, so that I alone should suffer and 
all those who are to be found between Perpignan and 
Seville should not have to be burnt.” ‘Twenty-five years 
after this was written in Spanish, Ribadeneira printed 
in his first Life of Ignatius a Latin translation which 
makes this letter merely solemn and rhetorical and leaves 
out every trace of its gentle irony.* - 

So far as we can judge from the specimens we have 
of it, the humour of Ignatius was like some dry, pale, 
very delicately flavoured wine which does not keep well 
nor bear transportation. For example when one of his 
lieutenants reported from Bologna that he had closed the 
door of the house there against a certain priest Ignatius 
wrote “You did well to bar the door against him and if 

“Letts. I, 408, Rib. First Life. 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 353 


you barred it with one bolt do it with two.”* To Dr. 
Loarte, who by his orders had been put through such 
a trying test as a novice, Ignatius wrote soon after he 
had been sent to Genoa, “We have not heard from you 
here except from Gonzales who met you on the journey 
and we would gladly know in what condition the ham- 
pers you wanted sent arrived. Pay for the trifling care 
we took over that matter by writing to your friends 
here of your journey, your health and your progress in 
the use of Italian.”” And then Ignatius adds slyly, “I do 
not believe you suffered too much from the sun because 
you had when you went away a quite sufficient provision 
of cappelli’’—literally “hats,” but a slang phrase mean- 
ing a hard rebuke.*® 

It was in the same tone that he said to distinguished 
visitors to the house “If your Excellency wishes to do 
penance stay to dinner with us.”** 

A novice who was offended when Ignatius said to him 
once, “If you do not wish to be obedient you are not fit 
to be a member of the Company,” insisted on leaving be- 
cause our Father had said he was not fit for the Com- 
pany. When after arguments which lasted a good part 
of the night, the lad was brought to a better frame of 
mind, Ignatius asked him to name his own penance (a 
thing he often did with penitents). The lad replied, 
‘Whatever you think best.” ‘Very well,” said Ignatius, 
“Your penance is not to be tempted any more. I'll do 
penance for you every time I have one of my pains in 
the stomach.” ** 

Camara, in his Boswellian notes, records this, marking 
it simply as a proof of Ignatius’ great love for his brethren. 
“He took the greatest pleasure in hearing all the details of 
the life of the brethren and made me read letters, espe- 


“Tetts. II, 488. “Letts. IX, 633. Crusca, VIII, dare un cappello—objugare 
o increpare. “’ Scripta, I, 246, Memoriale. “Scripta, I, 295. 


354 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


cially from India, two or three times and wanted to know 
what they ate, how they slept, etc., and once he broke 
out, ‘Oh, I should like to know how many fleas bite my 
fathers at night.’ ’’* 

The author of the first printed Life of Ignatius devotes 
most of the last book of it to discussing under fourteen 
heads his characteristics. The suggestion that he should 
add a chapter on his humour would probably have seemed 
to him almost profane. His other contemporary biog- 
rapher who worked with him for many years, has recorded 
only one joke which is in the same tone of pleasant irony. 
A member of the Company was going on a short journey 
with two laymen and they all came to say good-bye to 
Ignatius. He remarked as they left, ‘““Be sure you make 
saints of both of them.”°° These anecdotes, which have 
been preserved not for the wit but for something else 
in them, seem like small fragments; but they were hardly 
the only ones which might have been recorded and they 
indicate that through the talk of Ignatius there ran some- 
times a vein of delicate humour,—almost shy as if he were 
a little afraid of it himself. 

Although his intimates seem to have failed to see or to 
have forgotten, the humour of Ignatius, their memories 
of him were not stern. We know that Nadal, one of the 
faithful ones closest to him at the end of his life, was 
sometimes moved to tears by the “terrible rebukes” of 
his beloved master, but he wrote: ‘Everybody in the 
room of Ignatius was always most joyful and smiling.”* 
For, pleasureless as the life of Ignatius seems to most of 
us, to him, in spite of the monotony of heavy labour 
broken by recurrent weariness and pain, it was filled with 
joy. The only self denial which now cost him effort was 
his duty to obey the doctors who warned him that he 
must restrict the happy tears, the nervous exaltation, of 
his intercourse with God in prayer. But this was not what 

“Scripta, I, 196, Mem. ™ Pol. I, 290. * Scripta, I, 202, 454, 471. 


ERT eT ha ee TO ee 


ee ee ee ee ee ee ee 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 355 


George Eliot aptly called ‘“other-worldliness’”—the sense 
that it was a good bargain to trade earthly joys for 
heavenly. After all the master motive of his life was 
not hope of the next world; it was what he could do in this. 
We have this conversation from Lainez himself. Ignatius 
said, “Tell me, Lainez, what would you do if God said 
to you ‘If you wish to die on the instant I will set you 
free from the prison of the body and give you eternal 
glory. ...’ And if you knew that by staying longer 
in this world you could render more service to God, which 
would you choose?” Lainez answered, “ ‘For my part, 
my Father, I confess I would choose to go immediately to 
the enjoyment of God and I would assure my salvation 
which is a thing of too great importance to be given up.’ 
‘Well,’ answered Father Ignatius, ‘certainly I would not 
make such a choice. If I thought I could render the 
smallest service to Our Lord, I would pray Him to leave 
me in this world so long as my task was not finished.’ ”’°? 

This inner joyfulness in communion with God, this sense 
of contentment in God’s service, which made all burdens 
light to him, showed in his face. Oliver Manareus, whom 
Ignatius made a rector of the Roman College, told the 
judge in one of the processes for canonization that he re- 
membered how the face of Ignatius had a certain joy and 
good will almost divine, so lighted up was it by heavenly 
brilliance.** Thirty years after the death of Ignatius, 
Alexander Petronius, one of his physicians, “at the urgent 
request of the reverend fathers of the Company of Jesus” 
took oath before a notary to an affidavit to the following 
effect. He was ill and his friend Ignatius came to see him. 
The servants admitted the well known visitor who went 
straight to the room of the doctor, who was sleeping. 
So, treading softly, Ignatius withdrew from the room. 
“The doctor awaking called out suddenly to his wife: 


Father Clair’s trans. of Rib. Life, pg. 410. ° Act. Sanct. 597 b. 


356 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


‘Felicitas, what is this new splendor which fills my room 
with so great a light?’ She responded in all simplicity that 
the windows were closed and that Ignatius had been there. 
By which visitation the deponent was wonderfully re- 
joiced and soon after got entirely well, and from that day 
looked up to Father Ignatius more and more as a being 
higher than a mere mortal man.”** It is, of course, en- 
tirely in accord with what has happened in similar cases, 
that this glowing face of Ignatius should not remain en- 
tirely in the shape of a tender memory but finally take a 
form usable as evidence in a court of canon law; an 
affidavit that the light of Ignatius’ countenance once con- 
tinued to light a room like a lamp for a man who did not 
know Ignatius had been there. But perhaps some readers 
may think it more illuminating for the character of 
Ignatius to know simply that his friends recollected that 
his face often shone with joy because his heart was radiant 
with the love of God and man. 

Some years before his death, his friends thought him 
ready for heaven and he had many warnings that he might 
not be long for earth. His correspondence shows that in 
fifteen years he was ill fifteen times; frequently many 
weeks in bed, often in a condition to cause anxiety.” But 
his friends and the doctors had seen him rally so often 
from pain and weakness when some sudden difficulty arose 
in which he was needed, that, as often in the case of men 
of feeble health and great will power, they came to look 
rather calmly on his periods of illness. When therefore, 
he was intermittently ill for the first six months of his 
sixty-sixth year, the doctors were not discouraged. There 
were many sick in the house and Ignatius had told the 
house doctor to devote himself to them. But Dr. Pe- 
tronius, who was a sort of visiting physician, came every 
day to see him. On the 31st of July, 1556, at eight in the 
evening, Ignatius, after sending out the nurse, told Polanco 

* Act, Sanct. 597 E. * Boehmer has collected the allusions. 270. 


SS 


THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF IGNATIUS 357 


that death was near and bade him let the Pope know and 
“humbly beg the benediction of His Holiness upon him and 
Lainez, who was gravely ill; (25) and if God took them 
to heaven they would pray there for His Holiness as they 
did every day here,’ I replied ‘The doctors do not think 
there is danger in the illness of your Reverence and I hope 
God will keep you many years for His service here. Do 
you feel so very badly?’ He said to me, ‘I am in such a 
state that there is nothing left for me except to die.’ ”’ Po- 
lanco continued to express hope and asked if it would not 
do to go to the Pope the next day, because he wanted that 
night to finish letters for the courier to Spain via Genoa, 
who left in the morning. ‘He said to me, ‘I should like 
it better today than tomorrow, the sooner the better. I 
should like it, but do what you think best. I leave it freely 
in your hands.’” Polanco a little later asked Dr. Pe- 
tronius if he thought Ignatius was in danger and whether 
he had better tell the Pope he was. The doctor exam- 
ined him and said he could see no sign of immediate 
danger, but he would come tomorrow and speak definitely. 
That evening Polanco and Father Madrid supped with 
Ignatius, who ate with what was, for him, a good appetite, 
and Polanco went back to his writing. ‘The nurse of 
Ignatius said he was restless during the night and called 
him frequently, but about midnight lay quiet, occasionally 
murmuring “O! God!” The nurse then went down to the 
kitchen to cook two eggs which the doctor had ordered, 
leaving Father Madrid to watch. When he came back 
in a few minutes Ignatius was dying. Polanco started at 
once for the Vatican. The nurse went to find one of the 
fathers to give extreme unction, but when he returned to 
say he could riot find him, Ignatius was dead.” 

So died the creator of the Company of Jesus. Few 
great religious leaders of his own or for many succeeding 


56 Po]. VI, 37. Polanco’s letter written 6 days later. Examination of the 
nurse. Act. Sanct. pages 520-523. 


358 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


generations would willingly have turned his back on the 
world thus in silence, with no last solemn exhortation to 
his followers. But Ignatius had already taught his 
disciples all he had learned from God. Twice already he 
had tried to put the burden of leadership from his en- 
feebled shoulders. Death had long seemed to him all 
in the day’s work for God and its approach a joyful thing. 
Among people prone to make of every deathbed a scene 
as dramatic as possible, where friends watched a spec- 
tacular entry into heaven, he chose to say farewell to life 
quietly. This seems like the ruling passion—strong in 
death—the last expression of that simplicity, that hu- 
mility, that sincerity, that self-forgetfulness of his life 
which prompts this question: ‘‘Who of all those who 
have confessed themselves followers of Christ, has been 
more faithful than Ignatius Loyola to the ideal which 
seemed to him true?” 


NOTES 


(1) There is a story widely accepted in the seventeenth century that 
Ignatius’ mother went to the stable to give birth to her expected son in order 
that he might begin life as Christ did. The story seems to have had its origin 
in a picture painted for a Jesuit house in Antwerp some fifty years after 
Loyola’s death. It is rejected by the best modern biographers as lacking any 
foundation in the testimony of those who might know the facts. It is worthy 
of notice only because it is a good example of the rapid growth of legend 
about Ignatius Loyola as soon as the men who knew him had died or grown 
old. Page 16. | 

(2) The idea that Ignatius’ words divide his youth into two parts appears 
in Henao, whose work was approved in 1687. His earliest source is 1599. It 
is therefore a product of the uncritical, edifying and apologetic writing on 
Ignatius, of the seventeenth century. Fito in Boletin 17, p. 506, quotes 
in a note the opening sentence of the Confessions of Ignatius from the Latin 
version, ‘Ad annum usque vigesimum sextum fuit mundi vanitatibus deditus 
(mox) praecipue vero armorum exercitio delectabatur magno et inani desiderio 
ductus honoris comparandi,” and translates it into Spanish with this sense: 
“Disillusioned about the hopes and vanities of the court and of its strife and 
tourneys, he gave his affections more to the professional exercise of arms or 
in following the military career extremely desirous of gaining honor and fame.” 
The distorting gloss in the words court-tourney, professional-military career, 
is too evident to need demonstration. Astrain, p. 6, n., says this may appear 
“a somewhat gratuitous” explication of the text, but is inclined to accept it. 
Boehmer says “the unprejudiced reader’ will neglect this gloss. Susta says 
this attempt “to divide his youth before conversion into two periods, one wild 
and careless, the other given to serious study of the profession of arms, can 
never be brought into accord with the first two sentences of the Confessions.” 
p. 93-94. This last remark seems plainly true. Page 18. 

(3) A note on the margin we do not know from whom, says, “It had 300 
pages in quarto all written.” This book, in whose recollection Ignatius took 
such evident pleasure, is lost. It was doubtless lost when he dictated this 
account of it. None of his friends know anything of it except what he told 
them. Page 32. 

(4) Three hundred years earlier the sainted King Louis IX of France had 
similar sentiments toward Jews who called in question the virginity of Mary 
the mother of Christ. He told Joinville that once a conference between Jews 
and clergymen was assembled at the monastery of Cluny. There was at the 
monastery a poor crippled chevalier who was being lodged and fed by the 
abbot. He asked one of the Jews if he believed in the virgin birth. When 
the Jew confessed his disbelief, the chevalier swung one of his crutches and 
knocked him down. “I tell you,” added the pious King, “that no one unless 


359 


360 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


he is a very learned clerk ought to enter into dispute with them. A layman 
when he hears Christian doctrine evil spoken of should defend it only with the 
sword, plunging it to the hilt in the infidel’s body.” Page 35. 

(5) It seems strange that Ignatius did not here recall or allude to. the vision 
of Peter which removed his scruples about eating meat that was “unclean.” 
Ignatius was well read in the scriptures. Quotations are to be found in his 
letters from all the books of the New Testament except Titus and Jude, but 
they are mainly in his more formal letters like that on Obedience, etc. In 
his ordinary letters they are rare. He does not naturally quote. We know 
that for years he read a chapter of the Imitation of Christ every day and 
together with the New Testament, it lay always on the table in his room. So 
far as the writer has noted in the entire range of the writings of Ignatius there 
is no formal quotation from the Imitation. And, although some may have 
been overlooked, they must be infrequent. Page 42. 

(6) One partial exception to this observation should be noted here. In 
1546 Father Franciscus Strada preached in a Spanish city. “When they 
thought the sermon was finished, Strada asked for a crucifix and, when he 
showed it to the people, adding some words to arouse compassion, so great an 
outburst of weeping arose from the whole audience, both men and women, that, 
for a quarter of an hour, as if there were in all only one will and feeling, the 
whole church was filled with sighs and groans and laments, so that those who 
were present said they had never seen anything like it and it seemed as if the 
souls of many wished to leave their bodies because of this anguish.” Pol. I, 193. 

(7) Astrain and Venturi disagree with Boehmer about this highly improb- 
able trait of kneeling at the feet of Ignatius. Astrain refers in a footnote to 
Ribadeneira for “this curious episode.” Venturi relegates the whole matter 
to a short footnote and calls “gratuitous” Boehmer’s judgment that the image 
of the principal of the largest college at the University of Paris kneeling in 
tears at the feet of a student who had disobeyed orders, is the fabrication of 
college gossip years later. But neither of these authors tell the story. Now 
that it is told plainly the reader can judge for himself how probable the 
weeping and kneeling of Dr. Gouvea is. Page 87. 

(8) Fouqueray’s comment on this is astonishing. Without giving any 
grounds he accuses de Thou of bad faith because he says, “Lainez se repandit 
en injures contre les Protestants,” and then admits that Lainez did just that 
by adding: “The truth is the orator had cited the Holy Scripture, branding 
in advance the heretics by the name of snakes, foxes, wolves in sheep’s cloth- 
ing, to warn us against their lies.” As if epithets were any less injurious 
because they had been used in Scripture! Fouqueray is ignorant of the ms. 
cited by Bouillé. The ms. of Lainez’ speech he prints in his appendix is just 
such a redaction as a man who felt he had been a little too vehement in form, 
would make. Page 92. 

The writer’s judgment on this episode is sustained by Rocquain, p. 21. 
“Lainez s’y était signalé (at Poissy) par les emportements de son orthodoxie, 
qualifiant des noms les plus injurieux Théodore de Béze et ses compagnons.” 

(9) It seems that both Astrain (page 79) and Venturi (page 69) have been 
unconsciously affected in their account of the content of this vow by the idea 
of the triple monastic vow. They say it was a vow of poverty, chastity, pil- 
grimage to Jerusalem. Ignatius was not asking these pious students to found 
an order nor was he looking forward to founding an order. Venturi and 
Boehmer agree in this, Astrain dissents; but there is abundance of direct 
proof to show that he is mistaken. This vow of Montmartre was not modeled 


~“‘ente 


<7. 


ee ae eee ee ee ee 


NOTES 361 


after the monastic vow and it was not triple. None of the early witnesses, 
neither Lefévre, nor Lainez, mention a vow of chastity; neither does Riba- 
deneira (edition of 1572) nor Polanco, the first biographers, who must have 
talked with many of those present. Of course if they were to become priests 
it was implied. Page 94. . 

(10) I cannot find in either Astrain p. 97 or Venturi 294 any citation from 
a primary source to support their assumption that the five capitoli were formu- 
lated in writing by Ignatius. It seems preferable therefore to adopt the 
attitude of Boehmer p. 248 which assumes nothing. He says, “After the 
formula was successfully reduced to writing, etc.” Whoever wrote it the 
capitoli must have been approved by the poor pilgrim priests and Ignatius 
must have been entirely in accord with them. Page 136. 

(11) Many members of the older monastic orders had for centuries been 
appointed to bishoprics and several members of the Company were urged to 
accept ecclesiastical dignities. Ignatius was extremely opposed to it and thought 
it a great menace to the Company. When the Emperor Ferdinand wanted to 
make Jay a bishop, Ignatius had a private interview with the Pope to beg 
him not to command it. He gave five reasons why it should not be done. 
The Pope listened graciously but was not convinced. Ignatius left no stone 
unturned, visiting almost all the cardinals to get their influence in preventing 
the appointment. When the Emperor, whom the Pope did not like to refuse, 
wrote to bid his ambassador not to press the matter any more, the Roman 
house said masses and sang the Te Deum Laudamus (Letts. I 45-460). Later 
Ignatius made every effort to prevent Borgia from being appointed a cardinal 
by the irresistible command of the Pope (Pol. II, 425). Page 155. 

(12) It is possible that Father Borgia may have read More’s Utopia. 
“They (the Utopians) do not so much as know dice or any such foolish or 
mischievous game. They have however two sorts of games... . The other 
game resembles a battle between the virtues and the vices in which the 
enmity in the vices among themselves and their agreement against virtue 
is not unpleasantly represented; together with the special oppositions between 
the particular virtues and vices; as also the methods by which vice openly 
assaults or secretly undermines virtue; and virtue on the other hand resists 
it.’ Book II, Section 4. Page 190. 

(13) This attitude was reciprocated. A Franciscan writer of the early 
eighteenth century claims that the real reason for the extraordinary success 
of the Company was that Ignatius had gained his perfection and holiness 
from the third order of Franciscans whose habit he had worn and whose vow 
he had taken. (Act. Sanct. p. 427, E.) The official life of Ignatius com- 
ments on this extraordinary statement truly enough, but with rather amusing 
- scorn, “I am sorry for the credulity of these good men who are caught by so 
crass an error and pay attention to a pure unadulterated fable.” Page 196. 

(14) John Ricasoli, a noble Florentine fifteen years old had never been 
out of Florence except to neighbouring villas. He wished to join the Company 
of Jesus in whose college he was a student. Knowing that he could not 
obtain the consent of his father and mother, he left the city and made his way 
to Rome, in spite of the fact that the Duke, moved by the complaints of the 
mother, sent mounted messengers on the roads towards Genoa and Rome to find 
him and bring him back. At the request of Ignatius the Pope had appointed 
three cardinals to hear such cases and they decided that the boy’s vocation was 
of God and he must be allowed to become a novice of the Company (Pol. IV, 
18, 164, 167, 168, 169). His uncle the bishop of Cortona on his return from an 


+ See note on page 368. 


362 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


embassy to England said merely “His mother has other sons” (Pol. IV, 18, 
164, 167, 168, 169). Page 205. 

(15) The name Jesuits was also not in very high repute in some places. 
There was a small order of Jesuates which had been founded in the 14th 
century. It had become a lay order whose most conspicuous work was dis- 
tilling liquors for medical use. Hence they were nicknamed, in some parts 
of Italy, by an irreverent pun “Fathers of the water of life’ (Acqua Vitae) 
(Acta Sanct. July Vol. VII, p. 259). The name had also been used at Louvain 
by a knot of priests and beguines whose secret morals were not on the high 
level of their professions of Christian zeal. Page 206. 

(16) The charge was brought against the later Jesuits of teaching that the 
end justifies any means. This book is not concerned with the Jesuits after 
the death of Ignatius. As far as Ignatius is concerned I agree with Mr. 
Sedgwick that there is nothing whatever in his words or actions to suggest 
that he ever taught or held any such doctrine. Page 230. 

(17) Eight years after the death of Ignatius, General Lainez defined three 
classes of educational establishments requiring respectively foundations for a 
staff of twenty, fifty and seventy members of the Company. Before the end 
of the sixteenth century General Acquaviva raised the minimum of each of 
the lower grades of colleges to fifty and eighty and refused to take charge of 
any university with a staff of less than one hundred and twenty (Hughes 59). 

(18) Polanco and Ribadeneira give a different version of this incident which 
they transfer to Barcelona. They say that Ignatius began to read this book, 
“but finding that it chilled his devotion to God and sensibly diminished the 
ardour of his devotion, he put the book from him and never wanted to read 
any of the works of that author.” (Rib. f. 29, first ed. Pol. I, 33.) Venturi 
accepts this version of the incident but evidently only because he has over- 
looked the other, for he calls the Memoriale “a precious supplement to the 
Confessions” and Camara “truly worthy by the Confessions and the Memoriale 
to hold the first place among the primary sources of our knowledge of 
Ignatius.” (Venturi II, XVII, XVIII.) Page 251. 

(19) The same experience was attributed to St. Francis Xavier. After St. 
Francis’ death the vicar of the church of St. Thomas at Meliapour wrote that 
Father Francis had spent three or four months in his house. Father Francis 
was accustomed to go out nearly every night to pray and flagellate himself at 
the shrine of St. Thomas. “I said to him one day: ‘Father Francis, don’t go 
to that place, it is a mest of devils. They will beat you.’ He laughed but 
nevertheless he took with him a young native who lived with him” and the 
boy slept near the door of the shrine, while his master prayed. “One night 
the lad was wakened to hear the cry many times repeated, ‘Our Lady will you 
not help me?’ And he heard the sound of blows without knowing who struck 
them.” The next morning Father Francis did not come to morning prayers 
and the vicar found him in bed because he was not feeling very well. When 
the vicar heard the story of the lad he repeated it to Father Francis, adding 
“Didn’t I tell you not to go at night to St. Thomas’ shrine.” He smiled. 
He was ill two days without saying anything to the vicar about this experience 
“only when we got up from the table I said to him, by way of a joke, repeating 
his own words ‘My Lady, will you not help me’ and he blushed and smiled and 
by his very silence supported my conjecture as to what had happened.” The 
great similarity of this story and the one told by the disciples of Ignatius 
about their master is evident. (Cros. II, etc., pg. 308, Comp. Mon. Xav. II, 
800.) Both might have been flagellating themselves and unwilling to talk 


NOTES 363 


about it. Page 290. 

(20) Increase Mather gives an account of somewhat similar things occurring 
in the house of William Morse at Newberry in 1679. A similar story of long 
continued disturbances in the house of a Mr. Mompesson is vouched for by 
the Reverend Joseph Glanville a chaplain of Charles II. who wrote frequently 
in defense of the reality of witchcraft. His chief writings on this subject were 
collected in “Sadducismus Triumphatus or A Full and Plain Evidence Con- 
cerning Witches and Apparitions.” (4th Edition, London, 1726.) Page 293. 

(21) He has already expressed the opinion that the true Ignatius has been 
found again by some of his modern biographers both Catholic and Protestant, 
notably by Astrain, Venturi, and Boehmer. Page 297. 

(22) This incident is dated 1541. It first appears in the second life by Ribad- 
eneira published in 1586, and he says: “I knew the boy before and after the 
devil was driven out of him.” Sometimes when his fits took him eight or ten 
men could hardly hold him down. Although he was an ignorant lad and knew 
only his own language, yet during his fits he spoke correctly in various languages. 
At first his face swelled. When the priest marked it with the sign of the 
cross, the tumor went to some other part of the body whence it could again 
be driven elsewhere by the sign of the cross. When the boy, “Whom I several 
times saw,” was told that Ignatius was away but would soon come back and 
cure him, the devil in him called out “Don’t talk to me of Ignatius for I 
consider him my greatest enemy.” “When Ignatius got back and heard from 
us what had happened, he sent for the lad and talked with him entirely alone. 
What he said or did I never found out, but the lad was freed from the 
tyranny of the demon. He became a Camaldulensian Eremite by the name 
of Father Basil.” (Not in Ist life. Rib. 585.) Page 318. 

(23) This seems somewhat puzzling for, in regard to five of the six miracles 
cited to the Pope, any historian would say that the testimony to the facts 
was far inferior to that accessible for the nine included in Ribadeneira’s list, 
which was not used in the final plea for sainthood. Four of Ribadeneira’s list 
came from the Confessions of Ignatius, two from Lainez, his close helper who 
wrote the first memorabilia of him, one from a patron of his youth and the 
other two are related of his own knowledge by Ribadeneiro who lived for 
years in the house with him. The ante mortem miracles pleaded before the 
Pope are not equally well vouched for by the intimates of Ignatius, with a 
single exception,—the freeing of the College of Loreto from demons told on 
page 291. Page 322. 

(24) H. Hiiller has attempted to show a Mussulman influence in the Spir- 
itual Exercises. His method is the familiar one of asking leading questions 
about things that might have happened, without suggesting the smallest reason 
to believe they did happen, and subsequently assuming those suggested opinions 
as if the questions had been answered authoritatively in the affirmative, 
e. g. pages 42-76, 44-225-250-251. The whole hypothesis is superfluous and the 
book contains no direct contemporary evidence which even suggests that 
Ignatius “drew inspiration from the works of Islam and the practices of its 
religious orders.” Page 336. 

(25) It may be conjectured that one reason for this was precisely the fact 
that the Pope had shown himself unfriendly toward the Company. He was 
the old opponent of Ignatius, Cardinal Caraffa. Ignatius was smitten with 
dismay when he heard of his election. (Scripta, I, 198 Memoriale ib 389.) 
When the Pope broke with Spain he ordered the Governor of Rome to search 
publicly the house of the Company for arms. (Cited, Boehmer 294, note 3.) 


364 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


To this insult he added injury for he suspended the allowance to the German 
College made by his predecessors and most of the cardinals cut off their sub- 
scriptions. (Pol. VI 15.) It came to the ears of the Company that he was 
threatening to investigate them and saying disagreeable things about their 
relation to Ignatius. (Nadal ctd. Boehmer 294. Ephemerides 1557.) It 
may be suspected that Ignatius wished to set an example of obedience and 
devotion to his followers—to make one last sacrifice of his pride and to teach 
his disciples that the blessing of the Vicar of Christ, whether he was a friendly 
patron of the Company or not, must always be sought by its members. 
Page 357. 


LIST OF BOOKS CITED 


The primary sources of the life of Loyola are discussed by Venturi, Vol. II, 
Chap. I. He has also printed new documents in his first and second volume 
and given a list of two hundred and thirty four titles of books cited. Astrain, 
Vol. I, has a Bibliographical Introduction and a list of eighty four works cited. 
Boehmer 308-340 has an excellent discussion of the primary sources. The fol-_ 
lowing list of ninety-two works does not comprise all those consulted, but only 
those cited by the writer. Some of these have been difficult to procure. One 
was located after trying in vain fifteen institutions, by the sixteenth letter. 
To Mr. Young, the Reference Librarian of Princeton University, the writer’s 
best thanks are due for his tireless efforts in finding books. He is grateful 
for the loan of books to the librarians of Boston College, The Catholic Uni- 
versity of America, The Library of Congress, Cornell University, Harvard 
University, Princeton Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, and 
Woodstock College. 


R. Academia de la Historia. Boletin. Madrid. 
Acta Sanctorum. Julii. Tomus VII. 1731. Edition 1868. 
Alberi, Eugenio. Cited Relazioni. 
Le Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato. Firenze 1839-63. 
Altamira y Crevea, Rafael. 
Historia de Espafia y de la civilizacidn Espafiola. Barcelona 1900. 
Amadis de Gaul. 
Biblioteca de Autores Espafioles. t. 40. 
Astrain, P. Antonio. . 
Historia de la Compafiia de Jestis en la Asistencia de Espafia. Tomo I, 
San Ignacio de Loyola. Madrid 1912. 
Bailey, N. (Translator.) 
The Colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus. London 1900. 
Bartoli, Daniele (1608-1685). 
. Histoire de Saint Ignace de Loyola. Paris 1844, 
Begbie, Harold. 
More Twice Born Men. New York 1923. 
Bobadilla, Nicolaus Alphonsus de. 
Gesta et Scripta. M. H. 8S. J. 
Boehmer, Heinrich. 
Studien zur Geschichte der Gesellschaft Jesu-Loyola. Bohn am Rhein 
1914. 
Boissonade, P. 
Histoire de la Réunion de la Navarre a la Castille. Paris 1893. 


oe 


es eS ae eee re a 


LIST OF BOOKS CITED 365 


Boletin. 
See Academia. 
Bordenave, Nicholas de 
Histoire de Béarn et Navarre. Société de VHistoire de France. Paris 
1893, 
Bouillé, René (Marquis de). 
Histoire des Ducs de Guise. Paris 1249. 
Brown, P. Hume. 
George Buchanan. Edinburgh 1290. 
Calvini, Joannis. Opera omnia. Corpus Reformatorum. 
Father Gonzales de Camara. Cited as Memoriale. 
Scripta I, 153. Acta P. Ignatii, cited as Confessions, Scripta I, 31. 
The Cambridge Modern History, Vol I. 
The Reformation. New York and London 1904. 
Clair, Father Charles. Cited Clair Rib. 
La Vie de Saint Ignace de Loyola d’aprés Pierre Ribadencira. A para- 
phrase of the second Life of Ribadaneira, with additions and appendices. 
Confessions. Often called the Autobiography of Loyola. 
Dictated to Gonzales de Camara, who took notes he afterward wrote out. 
Most of it is in Spanish, in which it was all dictated but, lacking a 
Spanish amanuensis, Camara dictated the last one-seventh of it into 
Italian. Scripta I, where it is entitled Acta P. Ignatii 
Consilium Delectorum Cardinalium. 


A ms. monograph containing unprinted documents on the family of 
Ignatius cited by Venturi. 
Cros, Father Marie, S. J. 
Saint Framcois de Xavier, Sa Vie et Ses Lettres Paris 1900. 


Loyola’s account of his visions. Published in part in De la Torre, Consti- 
tutions, 349-363, App. X VIII. 
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities. 
Smith and Cheetham. London 1830. 
Dictionary of National Biography. 
Edited by Sidney Lee. 


2 
The Life of Colonel James Gardiner. London 1743. 


Stephanus. 
Epistoke Mixtz, M. H. S. J. 
Erasmus, Desiderius. 
Opera, 1703. 10 vol. m 11. 
ee o- 
Histoire de le Compagnie de Jésus em France. Paris 1910. 
Fabri, Beati Petri, Monumenta. 
M. H. S. J. Madrid 1914. 


ie ceed Tetters of Exasamn. New York 1896. 


366 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Fiissly, P. 
Wahrhafte beschrybung der reyss und fart, so Peter F. und Heinrich 
Zeigler beid burger zu Zurich ...mit einander gaan Venedig... 


gethan, etc. Ziiricher, Taschenbuch V (1884). 
Godet, Marcel. 

Le College de Montaigu, Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, VII. 285. 
Guiffrey, Georges. Cronique du Roy Francoys premier de ce nom. Paris 1860. 
Hansen, Joseph. 

Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprocess im Mittelalter, etc. Miinchen 

and Leipzig 1900. 
Henao, Gabriel de. 

Averiguaciones de las Antiquedades de Cantabria, etc. Salamanca 1689, 
Hinschius, Paul. 

System des Katholischen Kirchenrechts. Berlin 1869-1895. 

Hughes, The Reverend Thomas, S. J. 
The Great Educators. “Loyola and the Educational System of the 
Jesuits.” New York, Scribner’s, 1892. 
James, William. 
Varieties of Religious Experience. 1911. 
Jortin, John. 
The Life of Erasmus. London 1808. 
Lainez, Father J. 
Epistola de S. Ignatio. Scripta I, 98. 
Lainez. 
Epistolae et Acta Lainii, Vols. VIII, M. H. S. J. 
Lefranc, Abel. 
La Jeunesse de Calvin. Paris 1888. 
Le Collége de France. 
Lenient, C. 
La Satire en France au XVL e Siécle. Paris 1886. 
Lewis, David. 
The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, written by Herself, translated from the 
Spanish. London 1904. 
Longridge, W. H. 
The Spiritual Exercises translated from the Spanish with a commentary, 
etc. London 1919. 
Loyola, Ignatius. 
The Spiritual Exercises M. H. S. J. Mon. Ig. Series Secunda. 
Epistolae et Instructiones XII volumes. Cited as Letts. 
Constitutiones, De la Torre. 
Luther, Martin. 
Werke. Weimar 61 vols. 1906-1921. 
Mansi, J. D. 

Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima Collectio. Paris, 1901-24. 
Mather, Increase. 

Remarkable Providences. Ed. George Offor. London 1890. 

Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu. The sources of the early history of the 

Company, printed by its care in about seventy volumes. 

Miiller, Herrmann. 
Les Origines de la Compagnie de Jésus. Paris 1898. 
Nadal, P. Hieronymi, Epistolae. M. H. S. J. 
Natal, Acta Quaedam. P. N. Ignatii A. P. Natali. Scripta I, 471. Latin. 


LIST OF BOOKS CITED 367 


Pastor, Ludwig von. 
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Paulus, N. 
Hexenwahn und Hexenprocess vornehmlich im 16 t. Jahrhundert. Frei- 
burg in Breisgau, 1910. 
Polanco, J. A. de. Cited Pol. 
Vita Ignatii Loiolae. et Rerum Societatis Jesu Historia. The Life of 
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Prime, S. Irenaeus, D. D. 
Prayer and Its Answer. New York 1882. 
J. Quicherat. 
Histoire de Sainte-Barbe. Paris 1860. 
Ranke, Leopold von. 
Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. Sammtlichte Werke. 
Leipzig 1894. 
Raynaldus, O. 
Annales Ecclesiastici ubi desinit C. Baronius, etc. Auctore O. Raynaldo, 
etc. Lucae 1747. 
Relazioni. Cited Rel. See Alberi. 
Frederici Reiffenbergi e Soc. Jesu Presbyteri Historia Societatis Jesu ad 
Rhenum Inferiorem. Cologne 1564. 
Reumont, Alfred von. 
Geschichte der Stadt Rom. 3 vols. Berlin 1867. 
Ribadeneira, Father Peter. Cited Rib. or Ribad. 
De actis patris nostri Ignatii. Scripta, I, 337. 
Dicta et facta S. Ignatii. Scripta, I, 393. 
Vita Ignatii Loiolae. Neapoli 1572. 
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Patris Petri de Ribadeneira Confessiones, Epistolae, etc. M. H. S. J. 
Rocquam, Félix. 
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Scripta. 
Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu. 
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Scripta de Sancto Ignatio de Loyola. Madrid 1904. Contains the pri- 
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Sedgwick, Henry Dwight. 
Ignatius Loyola. New York. Macmillan 1923. 
Stewart, Edith A. 
The Life of St. Francis Xavier. Headley Brothers, 1917. 
Theresa, Saint. 
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De Thou, Jacques Auguste. 
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De la Torre, Joannes, S. J. 
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Tschackert, Paul. 
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368 IGNATIUS LOYOLA 


Tyerman, L. 
The Life and Times of the Reverend John Wesley. London 1890. 
Villari, Pasquale. 
Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola. Trans. Linda Villari, New 
York 1888. 
Venturi, Father Pietro Tacchi. 
Storia della Compagnia de Gest in Italia. Vols. I and II. Roma 1910 
and 1922. 
Vives, J. L. Concerning the Relief of the Poor. Trans. M. Sherwood. 
Vocabolario degli Academici della Crusca. Verona 1806. 
Watrigant, Henrique S. J. 
La Genése des Exercices de St. Ignace de Loyola. Amiens 1897. 
Wesley, John. 
The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, AMM. Ed, Nehemiah Curnock. 
8 vols. 
Xavier, Father Francis. 
M. H.S. J. Monumenta Xavieriana, Vols. I and II. 


* Father E. F. Garesche, S. J., has kindly called my attention to the fact 
that Ignatius was not a monk in the accurate, technical use of the word. I 
use the word in its general popular meaning of “a member of a fraternity 
formed for the practice of religious devotions and duties and bound by the 
vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience” (Century Dictionary). 


+ Father Timothy Barrett, S. J., of Woodstock College, has been kind 
enough to send me evidence from Rodriguez, Polanco, and Manareus which 
overcomes the argument from silence in Note 9 and causes me to believe 
the vow of chastity was included at Montmartre. 


INDEX 


Acquaviva, General, 246, 362 (n. 17) 

Acta Sanctorum, 295, 322 

Adrian VI, Pope, 49, 159, 160, 193, 
aii’ 222 

Africa, 161 

Ailli, Pierre d’, 331 

Alcala, 57-62, 70, University of, 57, 65, 
251, 285 

Alexander VI, 21, 159, 173, 190 

Alexandria, 266 

Alms, given by Loyola, 49, 54, 58, 
131, 132; received by Loyola and 
comrades, 47, 49, 54, 121-124; 
Flemish and English, 84; regula- 
tions concerning, 100, 101 

Alumbrados, 59 

Amadis of Gaul, 36, 179, 187 

Amboise, Chateau of, 96 

Amrrique, Father, 326 

Anabaptists, the, 2 

“Anatomy of Vice,” 165 

Anglicans, the, 2 

Anima Christi, 269, 270 

Anthony, Father, 315 

Apelles, 168 

“Apostle to the Indies,” 257 

Apulia, 54 

Aquinas, Thomas, 170, 220, 283 

Aragon, 233 

Araoz, Father, 22, 83, 180, 350 

Ardébalo, 56 

Arévalo, fortress of, 18, 23 

Argenteuil, 81 

Arrack, 259 

Arteaga, Juan de, 59, 65, 73, 76, 81 

Asia, establishments of Company of 
Jesus in, 210 

Assisi, St. Francis of, 220 

Asti, 128 

Astrain, Father, 13, 331, 359 (n. 2); 
SoU, tm. 7,10. 9) Sol (n. 10); 363 
(n. 21); quoted, 167, 168 

Athenians, the, 263 

“Athens of Paris,” the, 252 

“Autobiography,” 9 

Aveiro, Duke of, 234 

Azpeitia, 15, 16, 20, 21, 27; Ordinance 
for the care of the Poor in, 100, 101; 
corruption in, 165; Araoz’s preach- 
ing in, 180 


371 


Baptista, Father, 186 

Barbaran, Friar, 352 

barbie 36, 46, 47, 54, 58, 63, 65, 

Barnabites, the, 196 

Baroelis, 318 

Basil, Father, 363 (n. 22) 

Basques, the, characteristics of, 4, 143 
quarrelsomeness of nobility of, 14, 
15; St. Jean Pied de Port attacked 
by French, 25; superstition of, 302 

Bassano, 118, 120 

Bastia, 181 

Bavaria, Duke of, 252 

Bayonne, 56, 99 

Beau College, nickname for Montaigu, 
244 

Beda, 252 

Begging, practiced by Loyola, 46, 47, 
49, 58, 80, 101, 102; Loyola’s ideas 
about, 82, 122; act passed in Eng- 
land to prevent, 82; abandoned by 
Loyola, 83; forbidden by Ordinance 
for the Care of the Poor, 100, 101; 
by guest of King, 122 

Belgium, 171 

Belleau Wood, 195 

Benedict, Saint, 
sisters of, 94 

Benefices, church, 163 

Beotibar, 14 

Berckmans, John, 327 

Bethpage, 53 

Bishoprics, of Italy, 167, 172; of Ger- 
many, 167, 171; of Pamplona, 168 

Bishops, 164, 166, 168 

Black Benedictines, the, 138 

Bobadilla, Nicolas Alfonso, 92, 118, 
141, 213, 235, 256, 318 

Boehmer, Professor, 12, 359 (n. 2), 
360 (n. 7), 361 (n. 10), 363 (n. 21) 

Bohemia, toleration of dissenting 
churches in, 3 

Bokoski, Father, 328 

Boletin, 359 (n. 2) 

Bologna, 93, 101, 102, 118, 119, 310 

Books, war on popular, 187 

Borgia, Caesar, 168 

Borgia, Francisco, 191, 195, 233, 317, 
361 (n. 12) 


226; convent of 


372 


Bouillé, 360 (n. 8) 

Boulaese, Jean, 244 

Brazil, province of Company of Jesus, 
266 

Broet, Father, 93, 118, 208 

Bull fights, suppression of, 187 

Burgos, 32, 74 

Burgundy, 332 


Caceres, Lope de, 59, 65, 73, 75, 81 

Caesar, Octavian, 203-205, 224 

Calahorra, diocese of, 169 

Calixto, 59, 61, 71, 72, 75, 81 

Calvin; John, 214, 251, 301 

Calvinism, 296, 297 

Calvinists, the, 2, 253 

Camara, Gonzalez de, 9, 10, 16, 120, 
179, 303, 315, 353, 362 (n. 18) 

Cambray, Bishop of, 201 

Cano, Melchior, 91, 206, 207 

Canton, 264 

Cape Comorin, 260, 323, 326 

Caraffa, Giovanni Pietro, 204, 215, 
363 (n. 25); order of priests founded 
by, 112; his opposition to Loyola, 
112, 113, 116, 117; quoted, 166; 
see also Paul IV 

Cardenas, Teresa de, 60 

Carmelites, the, 250 

Carmen, church del, 332 

Carpi, Cardinal of, 204 

Carranza, Bartholomew, 207 

Carthusians, the, 33, 196 

Carvalho, André, 261, 262 

Castile, 25, 233; King of, 15 

Castro, 102 

Catarino (Chaterino), 207, 208 

Catherine de Medici, 92, 315 

Catholics, Roman, 2, 213; history of 
16th Century written by Protestants 
compared with, 168; Protestant at- 
titude toward Company of Jesus 
compared with, 192; bitterness be- 
tween Protestants and, 214; miracle 
of crab and crucifix accepted by, 329 

Cazador, Jacob, 102 

Cellini, Benvenuto, 313, 314 

Cervantes, 17 

Ceylon, Isle of, 260 

Charles I, king of Spain, see Charles 
V, emperor 

Charles II, 363 (n. 20) 

Charles V, 23, 25, 100, 106, 250 

Chieti, 112 

China, Xavier’s determination to go 
to, 263 

Christ, Life of, by Ludolph, 268 

Christian doctrine, chanting of, 188 


INDEX 


Beers: Soldier’s Handbook, The,” 

251 

“Chronicle of the Company on the 
Lower Rhine,” quotation from, 351 

Church, the Holy Roman, breaking up 
of, 2; corruption in, 158 ff; recom- 
mendations to Pope about reform 
in, 162-164; revolt in Switzerland 
against, 169; weakness of influence 
in Germany of, 170; revival of, 171, 
172; Loyola’s loyalty to, 192, 193; 
controversies in, 193 

Cicero, 199 

Ciruelo, Dr., 61 

Cisneros, Garcia de, 

Cistercians, the, 137 

Civil War, 319 

Clement VII, 166, 172, 193 

Cluny, monastery of, 359 (n. 4) 

Coimbra, 219, 311, 329 

Codacio, Pietro, 121-124 

Codure, 93, 118, 141, 146 

Collége de France, 250 

Colleges, superiority of Paris over 
others, 247; of three languages 
founded, 250 

Colleges, of the Company of Jesus, 
number of, 238; training of proba- 
tioner scholars in, 239, 240; sub- 
jects to be taught in, 241; manage- 
ment of, 242; corrector in, 242, 
243; schedule of work in, 243, 244; 
care for cleanliness and morals in, 
244; free instruction in, 245; ex- 
clusively teaching institutions, 245, 
246; education of, founded on 
training of New Learning, 252 

Cologne, College of, 202 

Colonna, Duke, 213 

Columbus, 1 

Como, 302 

Comorin, Cape of, 260, 323, 326 

Company of Jesus, the, 3, 8, 10, 13, 
76, 93, 97, 101, 174; Spanish in- 
fluence in, 4; formation of, 8, 132- 
145; suppression of, 7, 8, 192; 
history of, 11, 179, 193; Monu- 
menta published by, 12; Cano’s 
charges against, 91, 207; service of 
Rodriguez to, 93, 236; naming of, 
121, 134, 318; house of, 121, 123; 
under command of Pope, 135, 151, 
152; opposition to, 137-139, 192- 
209; bulls issued by Pope for, 139, 
140, 175; Loyola sole founder of, 
140, 141, 178; Loyola elected first 
General of, 141-143; Constitutions 
of, 146-157; requirements for ad- 


268 


INDEX 


mission to, 147-150, 177, 217; dis- 
missal from, 148, 218, 228, 346, 
347; probation in, 148, 149, 177, 
239, 240; instruction to be given to 
members of, 149, 239 ff.; poverty 
required in, 150, 151, 216, 217; 
income-bearing property forbidden, 
150, 217, 306-308; unity in, 153; 
congregation of, 153, 154; election 
in, 154; requirements of General of, 
154, 155; purpose of, 158, 175 ff.; 
condition of Europe at time of 
foundation of, 158 ff., 169, 170; col- 
leges of, 170, 238 ff.; points of differ- 
ence in previous religious orders and, 
177, 178; high standard of character 
for, 176, 217, 218; preaching of mem- 
bers of, 179, 180, 360 (n. 6); confes- 
sion heard by members of, 181, 182; 
attacks on blasphemy and usury by, 
182, 183; help given to poor by, 
183, 184; quarrels reconciled by, 
185, 186; popular recreations op- 
posed by, 186; amusements en- 
dorsed by, 189, 190, 339; rivalry 
of other monastic orders with, 194- 
198; “stand off” attitude of, 196, 
197; conflicts of, with episcopal 
authority, 200-202; attitude of, to- 
ward family affection, 202-205, 218- 
224, 361 (n. 14); attack on, for 
using name Jesuits, 206; denounced 
by the Sorbonne, 208; growth of, 
210; provinces of, 210; system of 
letters for carrying on government 
of, 211, 212; women excluded from, 
215, 216; obedience spiritual basis 
for government of, 230, 231; letter 
to, on obedience, 225-228, 231; 
troubles of, in Portugal, 232-237; 
books suspected of heresy pro- 
hibited from, 251, 362 (n. 18); bat- 
tles waged with devil by members 
of, 287 ff.; God’s intervention in be- 
half of, 321; in Rome, 335 ff.; severe 
discipline of, under Loyola, 338, 
339; investigation of, ordered by 
Pope, 363 (n. 25) 

Comrades, the, of Loyola, 58-62, 
65, 66, 69 ff., 81, 89-94, 105-107; 
dress of, 59, 69, 70; preaching of, 
66-69, 118, 130; vow of Mont- 
martre taken by, 94, 95; Pope’s 
graciousness toward, 107, 127-130; 
children taught by, 119, 132; 
journey of, to Rome, 119-121; Co- 
dacio financial agent for, 121-124; 
alms received by, 121-124; assistance 


373 


of, in formation of Company of 
Jesus, 134, 140 

“Concerning the Acts of our Father 
Ignatius,” 10 

Concubines, 165 

Confessions, 9, 15, 17, 18, 26, 78, 103, 
105, 269, 285, 286, 297, 306, 317, 
362 (n. 18); 363 (n. 23); quotation 
from, 30-32, 34, 36, 46-62, 75, 77, 80, 
81, 83, 84, 99, 100, 102, 110, 112, 
120, 121, 359 (n. 2) 

Conquests, Portuguese, 256-258 

“Constitutions, The,” 8, 146-157, 158, 
176, 199, 213, 220, 241, 306, 337; 
points of difference from previous 
religious orders and, 177, 178; sec- 
tion of, on obedience, 229; ideas in, 
on education, 238 

Contarini, Gasparo, 130, 136, 176 

Contarini, Pietro, 103 

Cop, 251 

Coquerel, College of, 78 

Cordova, 186, 189 

Cornelius, Father, 287 

Cosmetics, Company of Jesus opposed 
to use of, 188, 189 

Corsica, 164, 181, 199 

Cortez, 258 

Cortona, Bishop of, 361 (n. 14) 

Cromwell, Oliver, 132 

Cruce, Joannes a, 325, 327 

Cuéllar, Juan Velasquez de, 18, 19, 
23 

Cumberland, 312 

Cyprien, Father, 262 

Cyprus, 50, 53 


Dante, 2, 30 

del Monte, Cardinal, 322 

Denmark, 3, 160, 169 

Denis, Saint, fountain of, 94 

Devils, battles waged by members of 
Company with, 287; reports of as- 
saults on men of, 288-293; belief 
Loyola feared by, 294-297; men 
supposedly possessed of, 224-299; 
cessation of belief in, 299; freeing 
of College of Loreto from, 322 

Diaz, Alfonso, 6 

Diaz, Juan, 6 

Doddridge, Philip, 311 

Doime, M., 352 

Domenech, 180 

Dominic, Brother, 314, 315 

Dominic, Saint, church of, 81; order 
of, 234, 260 

Dominicans, the, 70, 137, 248, 249, 
258 


374 


Don Quixote, 168 
Doria, Andrea, 56 


Edwards, Jonathan, 191; quotation 
from sermon of, 274 

Ejercitatorio Espiritual, 268 

Eliot, George, 355 

England, 80, 213; establishment of 
national church in, 2; schism in, 
169; witchcraft in, 301 

Equia, Diego de, 58 

Erasmus, 69, 72, 112, 117, 159, quoted, 
79; differences of opinion concern- 
ing, 193; founding of colleges by, 
250; “The Christian Soldier’s Hand- 
book” by, 251 

Eremite, a Camaldulensian, 363 (n. 
22) 

Escobar, Marina d’, 331 

Estrada, 180 

Ethiopia, 176 

Ethiopians, the, 266 

Europe, in the Sixteenth Century, 1; 
establishments of Company of 
Jesus in, 210; witchcraft in, 299 


Faber, Father, 10 

Fabro, Pedro, 106 

Fainting, result of religious ministra- 
tions, 67, 68 

Family affection, attitude toward, 
202-205, 218-224, 348, 361 (n. 14) 

Faria, Baltasar de, 45 

Farnese, Alessandro, 19, 20, 139, 173 
See also Paul III 

Farnese, Julia, 173 

“Fathers of the water of life,” 362 
(n. 15) 

Ferdinand, of Austria, 170, 361 (n. 11) 

Ferdinand, the Catholic, 15, 112, 255 

Ferrera, Duke of, 45, 54, 101, 118, 
119, 138, 139, 288 

Feuds, in Italy and Spain, 185 

Figueroa, Vicar, 59-61 

Fishing, Pearl, in India, 259 

Fito, 359 (n. 2) 

Flanders, 80, 160, 215 

Flea College, a nickname for Mon- 
taigu, 244 

Florence, 180 

Foix, Germaine de, 18, 19, 23 

Fonseca, Archbishop, 62 

Fouqueray, 360 (n.8) 

France, Collége de, 250 

France, toleration of dissenting 
churches in, 3; corruption in church 
in, 161; Company of Jesus in, 210 

Francis I, 25, 96, 106, 250 


INDEX 


Francis of Assisi, Saint, 16, 220, 260 

Franciscans, the, 137, 195, 248, 258, 
361 (n. 13) 

French, the, Navarre attacked by, 
24-27 

French Academy, 342 

Frias, Dr., 73, 75 

Frias, the Bachelor, 73, 74 

Frusius, Father, 182 

Fiissli, Peter, 63 


Gaeta, 33, 47 

Galileo, 1 

Gamboa, house of, 14 

Gandia, 182, 187, 188 

Garcia Ofiez de Loyola, Martin, see 
Loyola 

Gardiner, James, 311 

Genoa, 54, 56, 183 

German College at Rome, 123, 253, 
364 (n. 25) ; 

Germans, the, temperamental differ- 
ence between Italians and, 69 

Germany, 160, national church estab- 
lished in, 2; instructions to, from 
Pope, 159; bishoprics of, 167; 
weakness in, of influence of church, 
170; heresy in, 170; Company of 
Jesus in, 210; daughters forced into 
convents in pre-reformation, 220; 
attempt in, to have Hebrew books 
destroyed, 249 

Ghinucci, Cardinal, 137, 138 

Gillabodus, Dr., 333 

Glanville, Joseph, 363 (n. 20) 

Goa, 257, 262, 263 
College of, 260, 261, 324 

Goethe, 1 

Gonzales, 353 

Gouvea, Dr., 85-88, 256, 360 (n. 7) 

“Great Letter, The,” 261 

Great War, the, 195 

Greek, opposition to study of, 249, 250 

Guia, Estevan de, 216 

Guidiccioni, Bartolommeo, 137-139 

Guipizoca, 14, 18, 25, 56, 99 

Gutierrez, Father, 315 


Hapsburg, House of, 23 

“Healing, gift of,” 319 

Hebrew, opposition to study of, 249, 
250 


Hell, picture of, 273 

Henao, 359 (n. 2) 

Henry VIII, 90, 112, 169 

Heresy, Spanish attitude toward, 5, 
6; Loyola charged with, 59 ff., 66 
ff., 70 ff., 95-98, 109, 126-129; in 


INDEX 


Italy, 166; in Germany, 170, 171; 
in Northern Europe, 171; some 
causes of, 171; Spiritual Exercises 
accused of, 207; Loyola’s fear of in- 
fluence of, 251; rules by Loyola 
directed against, 283, 284 

Hernandez, Father, 22 

Herrin (lllirfois), 185 

Historia Indica, 327 

History of the Popes, 12 

Hoces, 118 

Holy Mary of the Sea, Church of, 57 

Holy Roman Church, the, 
see Church 

Holy Trinity, the, spiritual experience 
of Loyola with, 304-309 

Hugo, Victor, 91 

Hiiller, H., 363 (n. 24) 

Humanists, 248 


Ignatius de Loyola, see Loyola 

Illinois, feuds in, 185 

Imitation of Christ, the, 269, 276, 
360 (n.5) 

Immanuel, Father, 181 

India, 195; Company of Jesus in, 210; 
Portuguese Conquests in, 256; 
Xavier sent to evangelize, 257; low 
order of natives of Portuguese, 258; 
investigations in, of miracles of 
Xavier, 324; miracle of crab end 
crucifix notorious in, 329 

Indians, missions to, 266 

Ingolstadt, Academy and University 
of, 93, 252 

Ifigo, see Loyola 

Innsbruck, Catholic University of, 12 

Inquisition, the, 59 ff., 66, 70-75, 126, 
129, 200, 201, 207 

Institutes of Calvin, 296, 297 

Interim, the, 213 

Ippolito, Cardinal, 138 

Isabella of Castile, Queen, 18, 19 

Italians, the, temperamental difference 
between Germans and, 69 

Italy, condition of religion in 16th 
Century in, 160 ff.; corruption in 
church in, 163, 164, 166; bishoprics 
of, 167; Savonarola held saint in 
northern, 193; Company of Jesus 
in, 210 


J aa Saint, i lag of, 80 
Jaén, 61 

Jaffa, 51 

Janssen, Johannes, 268 


375 


Japan, missions founded by Xavier in, 
263 

Japanese, the, 263 

Jassu and Xavier, Francis, 255; see 
also Xavier 

Javier, see Xavier 

Jay, Claude, 93, 118, 139, 202, 318, 
361 (n. 11) 

Jephthah, tragedy of, 189 

Jerome, 220 

Jerusalem, 31, 43, 63, 192, 305 

Jesuates, the, 362 (n.15) 

Jesuit Lives, 297 

Jesuit Relations, the, 266 

Jesuits, the, 7, 8, 17, 69, 110, 187, 192, 
195, 199, 201-203, 206, 362 (n.15, 
16), education of, 238 ff.; missions 
to South America of, 266; belief in 
punitive providences of, 321; tutors 
and confessors to nobles, 340; art 
in 18th Century of, 342 

Jews, the, prejudice of Spaniards 
against, 91; controversy over virgin 
birth with, 359 (n. 4) 

Joanna, Princess, palace of, 195 

Joanna of Aragon, 213 

Joannes, Emanuel, 329 

John III, 258 

Joinville, 359 (n. 4) 

Juana, Princess, 201 

Juana, Queen, 23 

Juanico, 59 

Julius II, 137 

Julius III, 165, 175 


Kant, 64 
Kessel, Father, 351 
Knox, John, 191 


Lainez, Diego, 10, 117n., 122, 180, 
295, 315, 337, 357, 360 (n.8), 361 
(n.9), 362 (n.17), 363 (n.23); 
quoted, 34, 105, 110, 120, 130, 133, 
160; temperament of, 91, 92; at 
Vicenza, 118; conducting colleges 
idea of, 140, 238; criticism by, 
of Loyola’s methods, 230; harshness 
of Loyola toward, 236, 348, 349; 
his succession as general of Com- 
pany foretold by Loyola, 318; con- 
versation of Loyola with, 355 

Las Salinas, 50 

Lateran, Council of the, 161 

Learning, New and Old, 247-252 

Lefévre, Pierre, 84, 89, 90, 94, 105, 
118, 120, 122, 130, 361 (n.9) 

Leo X, 172 

Life of Christ, 29, 268 


376 INDEX 


Life of Ignatius, by Polanco, 15 

Lisieux, 262 

Lisbon, 122, 195 

Lives of the Saints, 29 

Loarte, Dr., 347, 353 

Lope de Caceres, see Caceres 

Lopez, Pedro, 20-22 

Loreto, College of, 291, 322; freeing 
of, from demons, 291, 363 (n. 23) 

Louis IX, 359 (n. 4) 

Lourdes, 262 

Louvain, 222, 362 (n.15); University 
of, 247; Erasmus called to form 
college at, 250 

Loyola, Ignatius, 1, character of, 3, 
4, 125, 335 ff.; international ideal 
of, 4, 169; a typical Spaniard, 4, 
339; faith of, 5, 43, 49, 50, 123, 
124, 285, 293; barriers to under- 
standing of, 6-8; Company of Jesus 
formed by, 8, 132-145, 178; writings 
of, 8, 9, 32, 146, 306, 315, 359 (n.3); 
biographies of, 11-13, 317, 318, 325, 
330, 352, 354; father of, 14; grand- 
father of, 15; brothers and sisters 
of, 15, 20-22, 33; birth of, 15, 16; 
youth of, 17 ff.; a page to Cuéllar, 
18, 19; tonsure taken by, 20; his 
early encounters with the law, 20- 
23; gift from Cuéllar’s widow, 23; 

. becomes officer in bodyguard of 
Duke of Najera, 24; generosity of, 
24, 25; ability of, for handling men, 
25, 87-89, 92, 93, 345, 346; at 
Navarre, 25, 26; confession made 
to comrade by, 26; operation on 
leg of, 27, 28, 268, 269; conver- 
sion of, 29 ff.; his desire to serve 
God, 31 ff., 335; visions seen by, 
31, 37, 42-44, 49-51, 53, 64, 119, 
120, 303-308, 360 (n. 5); lameness 
of, 33; his conception of holiness, 
34; controversy with Moor, 34, 35; 
dress of, 35, 36, 59, 69, 70; penances 
of, 35, 37) 57,65, 80, 81,,.345sin a 
hospital, 36, 37; changing feelings 
of, 38; scruples of conscience of, 
39-41, 44-46; his growth in spiritual 
understanding, 42-45, 57, 305, 306; 
illness of, 44, 45, 50, 57, 95, 102, 
120, 356; refuses companionship, 46, 
64; his practice of begging, 46, 47, 
49, 58, 80, 101, 102; his disappoint- 
ment in people, 47, 64, 75, 76; 
charity given by, 49, 54, 58, 131, 
132; pilgrimage of, to Jerusalem, 
46 ff., 51, 52, 63; at Mount of 
Olives, 52, 53; at Venice, 54, 102- 


110; gifts of money, etc., to, 54, 
56, 84, 102, 121, 123, 124; suspicion 
surrounding, 55, 56, 58 ff., 192; in 
prison, 55, 73-75, 118; at Barcelona, 
56-58, 77, 303; studies in Alcala, 58, 
65, 303; comrades of, 58-62, 65, 
66, 69 ff., 81, 95, 107, 119 ff., 134, 
140; charge of heresy against, 59-62, 
66, 70-75, 95-98, 109, 126-129; 
spiritual assistance given by, 64, 
65, 345; reactions to preaching of, 
65-69; at Salamanca, 70-75; simple 
sincerity of, 71, 143, 144, 341; letter 
to Agnes Pascual from, 77, 78; at 
University of Paris, 77-94, 251, 252, 
303; special tenderness of, for 
Xavier, 90, 256, 348; attitude of, 
toward family affection, 99, 202-205, 
218-224, 348-350, 361 (mn. 14); re- 
forms made through influence of, 
100; extracts from letters of, 103-- 
109, 113-116, 126, 127, 140, 226 ff.; 
opposition to, 112, 113, 116, 117, 
194, 206-209; at Vicenza, 118; at 
Rome, 121-128; 130ff., 335 ff.; 
elected General of the Company, 
141-143; Constitutions written by, 
146 ff.; opposition of, to acceptance 
by members of Company of ec- 
clesiastical offices, 155, 176, 361 (n. 
11); need for reform seen by, 158 
ff.; most outstanding figure in re- 
vival of ancient orthodox church, 
171; desire to declare truth rather 
than attack error, 175, 176; ine 
spiration received from, 178, 213; 
amalgamation with other orders re- 
fused by, 196, 337; his feeling of 
superiority of Company over other 
orders, 196, 197, 281; opposition to 
politics of, 199; his reply to Cano’s 
attack, 207; license for college at 
Paris obtained by, 208; growth of 
Company under leadership of, 210 
ff.; his system of letters, 211, 212; 
capacity of, for details, 214, 340; his 
dislike of lawsuits, 214, 215; con- 
fidence in success of, 211, 212, 337; 
believed life in religious order most 
perfect, 221, 281; his ideas on 
obedience, 225 ff., 335, 345; cele~ 
brated letter to Jesuits of Portugal, 
225-228, 231; attack on, for teach- 
ing obedience, 229; willingness of 
to accept advice, 230; disloyalty of 
Rodriguez to, 232-237; Jesuit col- 
leges at death of, 238; ideas of, on 
education, 238 ff.; his object in 


INDEX 


founding colleges, 245, 246; prefer- 
ence of, for University of Paris, 
247; his change of attitude toward 
asceticism, 248; opposition of, to 
spirit of Renascence, 248; influence 
of heresy feared by, 251; German 
College at Rome founded by, 253; 
success of Xavier due to, 256, 265, 
266, 348; last letter of, 264; object 
of life stated by, 270; rules directed 
against heresy by, 283, 284; his 
view of world as combat between 
God and Satan, 285, 302; terror of 
evil spirits conquered by, 285, 286; 
reports of attacks of devil on, 
289-291; beliefs that devil feared, 
294-297; rapid growth of legend 
about, 297, 359 (n. 1); “gift of 
tears” of, 308, 315, 316; mixture of 
capacities in, 176, 247, 315; miracles 
wrought by, 317, 318, 322, 330- 332, 
363 (n.23); works of healing by, 
318, 322, 355; canonization of, 321; 
attempt to trace oriental influence 
in, 336, 363 (n. 24); single purpose 
in life of, 270, 335, 336; will power 
of, 336; severe discipline of, 243, 
338, 339, 342, 347; misrepresenta- 
tion of, 341, 342; his care for wel- 
fare of subordinates, 244, 342-345; 
device of, to keep affection, 347; 
harshness of, in later years, 348-350; 
humor of, 350-354; gift to college 
of robe of, 351; conversation of, 
with Lainez, 355; death of, 356-358; 
claim vow of Franciscans taken by, 
361 (n. 13) 

Loyola, Manor of, 15 

Loyola, Martin Garcia Onez de, 98 

Loyola, Ochoa, 15 

Ludolf the Saxon, 29, 268 

Luke, Saint, 34 

Lull, Raymond, 311 

Lusus trudiculorum, the, 339 

Luther, Martin, 90, 159, 171, 214, 
250, 337; opposition of, to the 
Papacy, 5, 91; vows broken by, 
221; doctrines of, established in 
Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, 
169; belief in witchcraft of, 300, 
301 

Lutheranism, 251 

Lutherans, the, 2, 137, 213, 253 

Luxemburg, Prince Peter of, 331 


Mainardo, Agostino, 127, 128 
Macaulay, 187 
Machiavelli, 2 


377 


Madrid, 23, 180 

Madrid, Father, 357 

Malabar, 259, 260 

Malacca, fortress of, 263 

Malay Archipelago, 263 

Manareus, Oliver, 200, 291, 292, 355 

Manes, Diego, 51 

Manor of Loyola, 15 

Manresa, 36-39, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 
56, 64, 120, 268, 332, 340 

Marcellus, Pope, 215 

Marines, the, 195 

Mather, Cotton, 191, 363 (n. 20) 

Mathesius, 337 

Matteo, 340 

Matthew, the demoniac, 
(n. 22) 

Médicis, Catherine de, see Catherine 

Medici, Ippolyto dei, 173 

Medina del Campo, college of, 189 

Meliapour, 362 (n. 19) 

Memoriale, the, 362 (n. 18) 

Mendoga, Francisco de, 74 

Messina, 180, 203, 287 

Method of Spiritual Exercise, 268 

Metz, 331 

Michael, Father, 319 

Miracles, wrought by Loyola, 317, 318, 
322, 330-332, 363 (n. 23); difference 
between healings and, 319, 320; 
wrought by Xavier, 323-330; 
method of establishing, 324; accept- 
ance by Catholics and Protestants 
of, 329 

Miron, Father, 180, 222, 233 

“Miserables, Les,” 91 

Modena, 243, 338, Bishop of, 200 

Mohammedans, the 65 

Mompesson, Mr., 363 (n. 20) 

Monasticism, 7; points of difference in 
Company of Jesus and other orders 
of, 177, 178; weakening of ideal of, 
221; begun in sixth century, 226 

Monks, scarcity of, 170; rivalry be- 
tween different orders of, 194-198, 
200 

Mont Celasius, 118 

Monreale, 183, 236 

Montaigu, College of, 77-80, 252; 
rich and poor students at, 78, 79, 
244; three Spandiards at, 81, 82; 
nicknames for, 244 

Montelas, see Mont Celasius 

eine vow. of, 94, 256, 360 
(n. 9 

Montserrat, 34-37, 268 

Monumenta, 12 

Moors, the, 14 


318, 363 


378 


Moravians, the, 198, 199, 206 

More, Thomas, 249, 351, 361 (n.12) 
Morone, Cardinal, 253 

Morse, William, 363 (n. 20) 

Mount of Olives, 52, 53, 305 


Nadal, Father, 9, 10, 97, 231, 236, 
318, 343, 346, 348, 350, 354 

Najera, Duke of, 24-26, 33 

Naples, 25, 112, 166, 188, 204, 205, 
335; College of, 203, 242 

Navarette, 33 

Navarre, 24-26, 255 

Neri, St. Philip, 193, 351 

Netherlands, the, establishment of 
national church in, 2 

Newberry, 363 (n. 20) 

Newfoundland, 14 

Nicholas IV, 249 

Niger, Johannes, 181, 288 

Nobility, Spanish, 14, 21, 23; feudal, 
19 


Northampton (Mass.), 274 
Norway, 3, 160, 169 
Notre Dame, Cathedral of, 96 
Nymwegen, 195 


Obedience, Loyola’s ideas on, 225 ff.; 
instances of zeal to attain perfect, 
228, 229; celebrated letter on, 225- 
228, 231; advantage in, 243 

Olave, Bernard, 201, 202, 339 

Oliver, Bernard, 351 

Onate, 33 

Ofiaz, house of, 14 

Oporto, 180 

“Ordinance for the Care of the Poor 
in Azpeitia, The,” 100 

Ortiz, Dr., 112 

Otelo, Father, 343 

Our Lady, see Virgin 


Padua, 43, 118, 295, property given 
to found college in, 217; rector of 
college of, 318 

Palermo, 180 

Palestine, 63 

Pampeluna, Cathedral of, 255 

Pamplona, 21-24, 26, 63, 168, 301, 302 

Papacy, the, Italian influence in, 4; 
suppression of Company of Jesus 
by, 7; authority given by, to ex- 
communicate from Jerusalem, 52; 
Luther’s opposition to, 5, 91; Com- 
pany of Jesus under command of, 
135, 151, 152, 176; Company of 
Jesus approved by, 136, 137; at- 
titude toward, at time of founda- 


INDEX 


tion of Company, 158 ff., 169, 170; 
break in Denmark, Norway and 
Sweden from authority of, 169; in- 
vestigation ordered by, of Xavier’s 
miracles, 327 

Paravinhas, Dr., 73 

Paris, 75, 77; University of, 6, 78, 
85, 208, 247, 251, 252, 256, 338; 
heresy in, 96, 97; suspicion sur- 
rounding Loyola in, 192; Erasmus 
asked to form college at, 250 

Parma, 137, 139, 180 

Pascual, Agnes, 77, 84, 98 

Pastor, Professor, 12, 172 

Paul, Epistles of Saint, 180, 181 

Paul III, Pope, 19, 20, 125, 193; 
visit of Loyola’s companions to, 
107, 108; graciousness of, toward 
Loyola and his companions, 107, 
127-130; daughter of, 139; bulls 
of, for Company of Jesus, 139, 140; 
report of commission of nine ap- 
pointed by, 162; Henry VIII de- 
posed by, 169; orthodox Catholic 
reform begun with, 172, 174; brief 
from, forbidding women under di- 
rection of Company, 215 

Paul IV, 215; see also Caraffa; inves- 
tigation of Company ordered by, 
363 (n. 25) 

Paul, John, 289, 290 

Pearl fishing, in India, 259 

Pegna, Juan, 83 

Perpignan, 352 

Perugia, 181, 182, 199, 321 

Peter, Prince, 331 

Peter, Saint, 34 

Peter de Montorio, Saint, 142 

Petrarch, 30, 248, 249 

Petronius, Alexander, 355-357 

Philip II, 5, 6, 201, 210 

Piacenza, 122 

Piastrelle, 339 

Pilgrims, to Jerusalem, 50, 51, 53, 63 

Pitt, William, 213 

Pius II, Pope, 249 

Pius IV, Pope, 210 

Pizzaro, 258 

Poissy, 92 

Polanco, Juan Alfonso de, 11, 123, 
236, 319, 356, 357, 361 (n.9), 362 
(n.18); his Life of Ignatius, 15; 
quoted, 132, 133, 314, 315, 321; 
history by, of Company of Jesus, 
179, 181; harshness of Loyola to- 
ward, 348, 349 


INDEX 


Poland, toleration of dissenting 
churches in, 3; danger of break in 
Church in, 160; witchcraft in Rus- 
sian, 300 

Pole, Cardinal, 202 

Politics, Loyola’s disapproval of, 199; 
a cause of opposition to Company 
of Jesus, 200 

Portugal, Company of Jesus in, 210; 
King of, 213, 232; letter on obedi- 
ence to Comrades of, 225-228, 231; 
investigation of miracles ordered by 
King of, 324 

Portuguese conquests, 257, 258 

Portuguese, the, corruption of, 258 

Portundo, 56 

Postello, William, 310 

Poussines, 342 

Pratorius, Anton, 300 

Preaching, of rebellion by Luther, 5; 
reactions to, 65-69, 360 (n. 6); of 
Comrades, 66-69, 118, 130; of Main- 
ardo, 128; parish priests too igno- 
rant for, 164; of members of Com- 
pany of Jesus, 179-181; of Strada, 
180 

Prestonpans, 312 

Priests, corruption among, 159 ff.; 
scarcity of good, 171 

Princeton University, 274 

Protestants, 6, comparison of atti- 
tude of Spaniards and Germans to- 
ward, 5; history of 16th Century 
written by Catholics compared 
with, 168; attitude toward Com- 
pany of Jesus of, 192; misconcep- 
tion of Catholicism by, 193; bit- 
terness between Catholics and, 214; 
resistance of children not wishing 
to enter monasteries justified by, 
220; belief in witchcraft of, 299, 
300; attitude of, toward answers to 
prayers, 320; miracles in Bible ac- 

- cepted by, 329 
Prussia, 7, 160 

Puenta, Luis de la, 331 

Punicale, City of, 259 

Puritans, 187, 194 


Quakers, the, 103 


Rabelais, 244 

Ratio Studiorum, the, 238 
Reginald, Father, 310 

Reinalde, Juan, 65 

Rejadella, Theresa, 103, 104, 248 
Remigius, Saint, feast of, 83 


379 


Renascence, the, 1, 178; humanists 
chief influence in, 248; belief in 
witchcraft in ages of, 302 

Reuchlin, 249 

Rhodes, 50 

Ribadeneira, Peter, 123, 199, 322, 
339, 343, 348, Loyola’s biographer, 
10, 19, 86, 200, 215, 217, 310, 321, 
330, 360 (n.7), 361 (n.9), 362 (n. 
18), 363 (n. 22, n. 23); life of, 11; 
page to Farnese, 20; report by, of 
attack of devils on Loyola, 289- 
291; a reason of, for thinking Loy- 
ola a saint, 294, 295; Life of Igna- 
tius by, 321, 325, 330, 352 

Ricasoli, John, 224, 361 (n. 14) 

Rocquain, 360, (n. 8) 

Rodriguez, Simon, 93, 118, 122, 256, 
232-237, 349 

Roman Church, the Holy; see Church 

Romans, Epistle to the, 180, 181 

Rome, 33, 47, 48, 118, 119, 335; 
corruption in, 161; suspicion in, 
surrounding Loyola, 192; conflict 
at, over Octavian Caesar, 204; 
German College in, 218, 253, 338 

Roser, Isabel (Elizabeth), 56, 84, 98, 
102, 107, 126, 215, 216 

Rule, of St. Benedict, 226 

Russia, 7 


Sa, Calixtus de, 65 

“Sadducismus Triumphatus or a Full 
and Plain Evidence Concerning 
Witches and Apparitions,” 363 (n. 
20) 

St. Germain l’Auxerrois, church of, 96 

St. Jean Pied de Port, 25 

St. Sernin, 215 

Ste. Anne de Beaupré, 262 

Sainte Barbe, College of, 78, 85-88, 
244, 252, 256 

Salamanca, 22, 62, 70, 180, 269, 287; 
University of, 69, 198, 206 

Salmeron, Alfonso, 84, 91, 92, 118, 
235 

Sanchoan, island of, 264, 328 

Sanctisidoro, Dr., 73 

Sandoval, 301 

Santafiore, Count of, 139 

Santiago, 53 

Sapienza, College of the, 119 

Saragossa, 180, 200 

Sardinia, 292 

Savonarola, 193, 251, 312 

Schisms, in England, 169; in Northern 
Europe, 169, 171, 172 


380 


Scholastics, 248 

Scotland, 160; establishment of na- 
tional church in, 2 

Scythia, 161 

Sedgwick, Henry D., 12, 362 (n. 16) 

Segovia, 61 

Sepulveda, 6 

Sermons, extracts from, 161, 162 

Seville, 32, 352 

Shakespeare, 2 

Sicily, 182, 196, 203, 204, 236, 287, 
302; Company of Jesus in, 210; 
Viceroy of, 213 

Siena, 118-120, 134, 180 

Simon, Father, 262, 318 

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry 
God,” 274 

Sixteenth Century, the, change and 
turmoil in, 1-4; influence of Span- 
iards in, 4; faith of Spaniards in, 5; 
Monasticism in, 7; condition of re- 
ligion in Italy and Spain in, 160, 
161, 167-169; bitterness between 
Protestants and Catholics in, 214, 
215; modern views on reported dia- 
bolic visions compared with views 
of, 293, 294; tolerance in, of dis- 
plays of emotion, 315; belief in 
punitive providences in, 321; im- 
probable legends created in, 331, 
aan 

Sixtus IV, 172 

Sobreroca, 332 

Somaschi, the, 196 

Sorbonne, the, 208, 250 

South America, establishments of 
Company of Jesus in, 210; begin- 
ning of Jesuit missions to, 266 

Spain, condition of religion in 16th 
Century in, 160, 161, 167-169; 
preaching of Strada in, 180; sus- 
picion in, surrounding Loyola, 192; 
Company of Jesus in, 210, 213; 
provinces of Castile and Aragon in, 
233; witchcraft in, 300 

Spaniards, the, influence in 16th Cen- 
tury of, 4; faith of, 5; attitude to- 
ward heresy of, 5, 6; nobility. of, 
14, 19, 21, 23; on pilgrim ship, 50; 
affair at Montaigu of three, 81, 82; 
prejudice against Jews of, 91; 
Caraffa’s dislike of, 116 

Spiritual Exercises, the, 8, 31, 73, 74, 
84, 89, 98, 176, 314; training in, 
103, 126, 140, 177; accused of 
heresy, 207; help of, in deciding 
course of life, 267, 277, 281; origi- 
nality of, 268, 269; Annotations of, 


INDEX 


268; first printed, 269; Choices of, 
269; not meant for popular circula- 
tion, 269; division into four weeks 
of, 270; first week of, 270-276; par- 
ticular and general examinations of, 
271; the preambles of, 271-273, 277; 
points of meditation of, 272; collo- 
quy of, 272, 273; “meditation upon 
hell” of, 273-275; second week of, 
275-281; contemplations of, 276; 
meditations of second week of, 277+ 
279; elections or choices of life of, 
279-281; last two weeks of, 281; 
rules in, for discerning spirits, 282, 
310; rules in, for thinking truly, 
283; report circulated Virgin dic- 
tated, 331, 337; attempt to show 
oriental influence in, 363 (n. 24) 

Stanley, Henry M., 318 

Strada, Franciscus, 180, 360 (n. 6) 

Students, rich and poor, 78, 79, 244 

Sweden, 3, 160, 169 

Switzerland, establishment of national 
churches in, 2; revolt against 
Church in, 169; witchcraft in, 300 

Susta, 359 (n. 2) 


Taragana, 58 

“Tears, the gift of,” 315, 316 

Teixeira, Father, 325-327 

Texida, friar, 197 

Theatines, the, 113, 196 

Theodore, Father, 142 

Theresa, Saint, 286, 312 

Thomas, church of Saint, 362 (n. 19) 

Tivoli, 320 

Toledo, 20, 59; Archbishop of, 168, 
198, 207 

Torres, Dr., 233, 288 

Toulouse, 215 

Transylvania, toleration of dissenting 
churches in, 3 

Trent, Council of, 91, 161, 186, 198 

Treviso, 118 

“Triumph of the Cross, The,” 251 

Trojans, 249, 250 ' 

Turks, the, 50 n., 117, 196 


Universities, see Colleges 
Utopia, 361 (n.12) . 


Val Camonica, 302 

Valencia, 102, 180, College of, 222 

Valignano, Alexander, 326, 327 

Valladolid, 5, 62, 180 

Venetians, the, 117 

Venice, 33, 49, 53, 54, 63, 64, 102, 
107, 119, 120, 180, 192, 243 


INDEX .- 


Venturi, Father Tacchi-, 13, 172, 
331 n., 360 (n.7, n.9), 361 (n.10), 
362 (n.18), 363 (n. 21) 

Verdolay, Juan de, 107 

Verona, 118 

Veronica, Saint, shrine of, 61 

Vicenza, 118, 119 

pate, 170, 202, 220; University of, 
171 

Virgin, the, 30, 35; visions of, 31, 
43; image of, 34; assertion Spir- 
oe Exercises dictated by, 331, 
33 

Visions, seen by Loyola, 31, 37, 42- 
44, 49-51, 53, 64, 119, 120, 303- 
308; reports of diabolic, 286-293; 
of mediaeval saints, 311; of present 
day, 312; of Loyola’s contempo- 
raries, 312-314 

Vitelleschi, Father, 327 

Vives, Louis, 100 

Volcanoes, thought to be open mouth 
into hell, 287 

von Hagen, Philipps, 63 


Wesley, John, 67, 68, 198, 206; de- 
moniac possession reported by, 298, 
299; belief in witchcraft of, 301 

Westminster Catechism, 270 

Witchcraft, 299-302, 363 (n. 20) 


381 
“Words and Deeds of S. Ignatius,” 10 


Xavier, Francis, 90, 110, 118, 138, 
232, 244, 286; Loyola’s special af- 
fection for, 90, 256, 348; birth of, 
255; in India, 256-263; personality 
of, 257, 260 ff., 264; supported by 
the King, 259; affection of, for his 
brethren, 256, 257; ceaseless work 
of, 260 ff.; “The Great Letter” of, 
261; rector dismissed by, 261; 
healings resulting from preaching 
of, 262, 263; called to Japan, 263; 
determination of, to go to China, 
263, 264; credit for extraordinary 
missionary work in Asia due, 264; 
on island of Sanchoan, 264; in- 
spiration received by, from Loy- 
ola, 256, 265; explanation by, of 
volcanic eruption, 287; canoniza- 
tion of, 323; miracles wrought by, 
323-330; increase with lapse of time 
of miracles attributed to, 327-329; 
Latin tramslation of letters of, 342; 
attack on, by devils, 362 (n. 19) 


Ypres, 100 


Zamorra, Bishop of, 168 
Zwingli, 169 


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